Vian Sora (b. 1976 in Baghdad, Iraq, lives and works in Louisville, Kentucky, USA) is best known for vivid, improvisational abstractions which reflect on themes of creation and regeneration. Her compositions balance disorder with control, evoking the terrain of an aerial landscape or the bloom of flora. Working from above with her canvases laid flat, Sora dissolves raw pigments into rich, aqueous color fields. By applying dozens of layers of paint, Sora achieves a tremendous range of surfaces, from dense, crystalline textures to airy, atmospheric passages. Her expressionistic grounds are overlaid with a series of crisp, monochrome shapes, rendered freehand by the artist. They resemble elements of Arabic calligraphy and cuneiform which have been fragmented into the artist's own formal, non-representational language.

A self taught painter, Sora has received increased recognition and exposure in recent years from a series of exhibitions and museum acquisitions in the U.S. and Middle East. Her retrospective, Outerworlds, has just concluded at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, an exhibition curated by James Glisson. The retrospective will next travel to the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky and open October 9. This edition will be curated by Tyler Blackwell. The exhibition will continue to Asia Society in Houston, Texas in April of 2026, curated by Owen Duffy.

Sora has exhibited her works internationally at Sharjah Biennial, Sharjah, UAE; Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, USA; IMOGA Istanbul Museum of Graphic Art, Istanbul, Turkey; the KMAC Triennial, Louisville, USA; Grinnell Museum of Art, Grinnell, Iowa, USA and many other venues. Works by Sora are included in the permanent collections of the Speed Art Museum, Louisville, USA; Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, USA; Dar El Cid Museum, Kuwait City, Kuwait; Farjam Foundation, Dubai, UAE; KMAC Museum, Louisville, USA; Santa Barbara Museum of Art, USA; the Shands Collection, Louisville, KY; Grinnell College Museum of Art, Grinnell, IA; Ministry of Culture Contemporary Collection, Baghdad, Iraq; the Pizzuti Collection, Columbus, Ohio, USA; and the Shah Garg Foundation, USA, among others.