Maryam Monalisa Gharavi

Maryam Monalisa Gharavi is an artist and poet whose work explores the asymptotic limits of knowledge. She is the founder of Oil Research Group (ORG), a one-woman collective investigating oil, data, and extractive economies; in 2023, ORG was awarded an Anonymous Was a Woman Environmental Art Grant. Exhibitions and performances include Pioneer Works, Sonic Acts, Nottingham Contemporary, Serpentine Cinema, Delfina Foundation, Paço das Artes, Recess, ZKM Karlsruhe, among others.

Her book Bio is the first of its kind to be written on a social media platform while bypassing “big tech” data storage sites. Other book publications include The Distancing Effect; Secret Catalan Poem; Alphabet of an Unknown City; and two co-authored books on oil and infrastructure, Dictionary of Night and Oil News 1989-2020. Gharavi’s translation of Waly Salomão’s Algaravias: Echo Chamber was nominated for a PEN Award for Poetry in Translation; her translation of Salomão’s Border Fare is forthcoming from World Poetry Books. She is Editor Emeritus of The New Inquiry, where she wrote the open text South/South, cited as “one to watch” by Los Angeles Times.

She currently writes a Substack called Exhaust. She completed a Ph.D. at Harvard University; an M.F.A. at Bard College; held a postdoctoral Fulbright; and has served as visiting professor and guest studio critic at a dozen institutions. She is a prompt engineer in the field of generative AI.