Aphra Taghizadeh
I am Aphra Taghizadeh (b. 1999, Esfahan), a multimedia artist at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne (KHM), whose work spans directing, editing, XR development, research, and writing. My projects engage with visual and spatial explorations of human cognition, using mediums such as mixed reality, virtual reality, film, installation, and performance. In September 2023, I founded A Phrasal Image, a platform dedicated to digital media and immersive technologies.
Most recently, my MR/VR project Speechless Witness of a Wandering Tree (2024) premiered at the 37th International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) and won the Virtual Reality Award at the 2025 Sheffield DocFest.
Earlier works include Fort-Da Game (2021, co-director), a short film rooted in my research on repetition compulsion and the transfer of guilt, and Ja’az (2023), a documentary on the history of jazz music in the Middle East, which premiered at the Nahal International Short Film Festival in Tehran and has since screened internationally.