Art as Medicine: The Clare Feldman Poliakoff Inaugural Lecture

Dr. Nazanin Moghbeli

Nazanin grew up in Tehran, Iran, where she lived through the Iran/Iraq war, the deposing of the Shah, and the Islamic Revolution. These events deeply influenced her evolution as an artist. While living in Iran, Nazanin studied Persian calligraphy, miniature painting, and music. She moved to the United States with her family in 1983, where she pursued dual art and biology degrees at Swarthmore College.

Her post-graduate training spanned the Maryland Institute of Art, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Public Health, a medical residency at Harvard’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and a cardiovascular fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania.

As a physician, Nazanin founded the first Women’s Cardiovascular Center at the University of Pennsylvania — a pioneering initiative dedicated to the unique cardiac needs of women — and currently serves as Medical Director of the Cardiac Care Unit at Jefferson Einstein. Her work in medical education has further extended her commitment to shaping the next generation of physicians. These dual pursuits — art and medicine — are not parallel lives but deeply intertwined ones, each informing and enriching the other.

Nazanin creates work at the intersections of seemingly disparate disciplines: drawing, poetry, music, and medicine. Her work is preoccupied with her dual identities as an Iranian and American, artist and physician. It explores the nostalgia, familiar to immigrants from war-torn and post-revolution countries, for a place and time that no longer exists. As Iran struggles to find its role in a rapidly changing Middle East, Nazanin explores her experience as an immigrant and woman of color to find her place in American culture.

Her drawings are made with traditional Iranian bamboo “ghalams,” or quills, and she borrows carefully studied techniques from Iranian calligraphy to create abstract work. Rather than using these techniques as they were originally used — to create religious objects — she explores the secular meaning of line in and of itself. In the aftermath of the Islamic Revolution, she seeks the complete dissolution of words and instead prefers to create abstract images, her alternative to religious object making.

Julie Nolan is a board certified medical art therapist specializing in inpatient neurological rehabilitation at Jefferson Moss-Magee - Center City. In her daily work, she supports patients who have experienced a life-altering illness or injury, such as spinal cord injuries, stroke, traumatic brain injuries, and amputations. Working with patients aged 14 through end of life, Julie utilizes art therapy interventions to address the emotional and psychosocial needs of patients, while often also working on physical and cognitive rehabilitation goals.

In addition to practicing clinical art therapy, Julie is a supervisor of other creative and recreational therapy modalities and art therapy graduate and undergraduate students. She also teaches art therapy graduate students in Thomas Jefferson University’s Community Trauma Counseling program.

Recently, Julie has begun working with ARTZ Philadelphia in their Side by Side program to provide monthly art therapy groups for people living with dementia and their caregivers.

Promoting healing, health, and wellness through art therapy and pouring back into the art therapy community by teaching, supervising, and mentoring students brings Julie great joy. Outside of work, Julie spends all her time with her two greatest creations, Ellie and Bohden.