In this installation, flowers and plants are my paint, and space is my canvas. By drying fresh flowers and plants, I try to show the beauty of life in death, the rhythm, harmony, and the cycle of nature and time in fresh, dried and decayed. The lack of attention to our environment and surrounding made me focus the viewers’ attention back on this cycle while celebrating its beauty. The metaphors used in this installation are: the golden sphere for earth and universe, the clock fixtures taken apart (pendulums and clock hands) for time, Zodiac signs for months, ashes, soil, clays for representing decay, and dried flowers and plants to represent life and death. I used hundreds of plants and flowers in this installation, mainly from Alexandria and Northern VA.

This large site-specific installation is based on the concept of Biophilic design and connectivity to the natural environment through direct nature, indirect nature, and space and place conditions. The installation consists of three large painting panels of landscapes with dried plants, and florals gathered from Alexandria and the Northern VA area, which have dried and preserved through the years. The installation has elements inspired by GW Masonic icons and small mirrors for showing the reflections of viewers in this Biophic art environment inspired by the Alexandria area.

Painting with Colors Extracted from Daffodils Flowers. This simple tutorial video show you how you can extract colors and make paintable inks from Daffodils or Narcissus flowers growing every where in spring. By using simple salts and other natural minerals and plants, you can create more shades. There are some samples at the end to see. The process by itself is fun, artistic, connect you more to nature around you, helps to get more mindfulness and attention to environment, and increase your knowledge about botanical science, painting, chemistry and more. For more workshops please see www.sayabehnam.com

This video is about How to paint with Turmeric

Presenting my "Co-Creating Art with Nature" to George Washington University Students, with some samples and Q/A following the presentation. Nov 3rd 2019 Washington DC

This short, conceptual video is my abstract approach to the concept of the passage of time, and the transitory and fragile stage of being that all living things share. My art has been deeply influenced by the great 12thcentury Persian astronomer, mathematician, philosopher and poet, Omar Khayyam, who explored the depth of all these in his beautifully moving poems, Robayyats. While working with flowers and plants in the creation of my art, I intimately witnessed their often exquisite beauty, yet ever too brief life span. These experiences served as the trigger for this video. It is based on a wall sculpture I created out of mud, ash, dried flowers, saffron, natural colors extracted from flowers, pomegranates, bamboo paper with written poems, parts of clock and more. The full work is revealed as the video ends. This video could not be done without the great professional help of Behfar Bahdoran as composer and artistic director, and Babak Alipour, as videographer and editor. I cannot thank them enough for their work.

Adding Sumac tree extracted colors to the piece " Repetitive pattern of destruction and rebirth"