Leila

Leila works from a studio in Hamburg, making linocut and screen prints built around Persian botanical motifs — pomegranate branches, cypress, the stylized rose forms found in classical manuscript borders — reworked at a scale and palette closer to contemporary print than illumination. She trained in printmaking after settling in Germany, and her process is visibly hand-carved: tool marks stay in the block, registration is done by eye rather than machine, and each print in an edition carries small, honest variation in ink coverage. Working from the diaspora rather than from Iran directly shapes her subject matter as much as her materials — the motifs are drawn from memory, family textiles, and archival research rather than direct access to source objects. Her prints are made and shipped from her Hamburg studio.

A printmaker drawing on Persian botanical motifs, working from her studio in the Hamburg diaspora.

Isfahan diaspora / Hamburg

She wants each print in an edition to visibly differ from the next, refusing the flawless repeatability of digital reproduction.