When Anita Memar began building her artistic life in Greater Manchester, she was not simply starting a new chapter. She was looking for a way to translate experiences that are often difficult to put into words into something physical, something that could be held, touched and seen.
Today, Memar is a Manchester-based visual artist working across sculpture, ceramics and mixed media. Her practice has developed through a growing network of exhibitions, artists, galleries and creative communities across Greater Manchester and beyond, with her work now reaching audiences internationally.
But at the centre of it all is a quieter question: what happens inside us when we are caught between holding on and letting go?
Finding a Language Through Material
Memar's practice explores what she describes as “the space between silence and release”. Rather than beginning with a fixed image or narrative, she often allows the material itself to guide the work. Clay, texture, weight, surface, layering and repetition become ways of exploring memory, vulnerability, resilience and transformation.
Her relationship with material is closely connected to her interest in the inner life. Her engagement with Rumi's poetry has influenced this way of thinking, particularly his imagery of the fish and its relationship with the human inner life. This connection sits within MAHI JAN, an ongoing artistic exploration of the inner self, where the fish becomes a metaphor for a life that exists within boundaries while seeking freedom, movement and release.
The result is work that does not always explain itself immediately. Instead, it invites the viewer to look more closely and spend time with it.
A Creative Life Taking Root in Greater Manchester
Since completing her postgraduate studies at Manchester School of Art in 2024, Memar has become increasingly connected to the creative community around her.
Some of these connections have developed through exhibitions, while others have grown through the everyday life of making. At Flock & Gaggle in Salford Quays, her work has been exhibited and sold, alongside her involvement in markets, pop-ups and events. At 7 Spot Pottery, where she is a studio member, her practice has continued to develop through regular work with clay and through connections with other makers.
These spaces have become more than places to show work. They have helped Memar build a sense of belonging within Greater Manchester's creative community.
That local connection has also led to opportunities to share her practice with others. She has been invited to lead creative workshops through Global Roots Canvas and has also been invited by The Broughton Trust in Salford to deliver a creative workshop.
From Local Opportunities to a Wider Audience
Oldham has become another important part of this journey.
Memar took part in the Oldham Art Fair in 2025 and has been invited to return for the 2026 edition. Her work has also been featured through Oldham Community Radio via GO! Artists, while Go Friends has featured her as an artist.
These opportunities are part of a wider pattern. Rather than following a single route into the art world, Memar's practice has grown through a combination of exhibitions, community connections, recommendations and invitations.
One particularly significant invitation came from Claire Turner, Gallery Director at Comme Ça Art, who recognised Memar's developing practice and introduced her to the AWOL Studios community. This led to her participation in the AWOL × Comme Ça Art exhibition at Hope Mill in Manchester.
Her work has also appeared in MADE IT 2025: The North West Graduate Art Prize at PINK in Stockport and B*O/D&Y, presented by SPIRA9 ART × Gallery 46 in London.
When Others Begin to Notice
As the work has developed, attention around Memar's practice has moved beyond exhibition spaces.
In 2026, writer and critic Mollie Balshaw published Come Closer: Anita Memar and the Politics of Attention, looking closely at her sculpture, materials and the ideas that sit behind her practice. Her work has also been discussed in an interview and review by Seyed Morteza Hosseini for Tehran ANA News Agency.
For an emerging artist, this kind of engagement matters because it moves the conversation beyond where a work has been exhibited. It asks why the work exists, what it is trying to explore and how an audience might encounter it.
That conversation is continuing through new opportunities. Nova Studios has invited Memar to take part in a short film about her artistic practice and artwork, creating another opportunity for audiences to encounter both the artist and the ideas behind the work.
From Manchester to Toronto
The journey has also begun to move beyond the UK.
In 2026, Memar exhibited at CIRCA Atelier in Toronto as part of The Things We Carry. One of the works presented in the exhibition was sold to a collector from Montreal, giving the work a life beyond the exhibition itself.
For Memar, international exposure is not separate from the local journey that brought her here. It is an extension of it.
The studios, exhibitions, conversations and relationships built across Greater Manchester have all contributed to the development of a practice that is now beginning to reach further.
Still Becoming
There is no sense that Memar sees these recent opportunities as an endpoint.
Her practice remains rooted in the same questions that have shaped it from the beginning: how inner experiences can become physical form, how vulnerability can coexist with resilience, and what it means to move from restriction towards release.
Perhaps that is why the idea of the space between silence and release continues to feel central to her work. It describes not only what happens within the sculptures, but also something about the artist's own journey.
From a studio in Greater Manchester to exhibitions in London and Toronto, Memar is gradually building a practice that asks viewers to slow down, look inward and consider what might be waiting on the other side of silence.
