Perwana Nazif (b. 1993) is a writer and independent curator. She serves as Artistic Director of the Los Angeles Review of Books and teaches at the California Institute of the Arts. Her latest curatorial projects include the 2025 Parapraxis Film Festival at Light Industry in New York and an exhibition at JOAN in Los Angeles on François Pain’s archives. She recently edited Everybody Wants to Be a Fascist (semiotext(e), 2025) and is a contributing editor at Parapraxis Magazine. Her practice also includes upcoming archival and translation projects on psychoanalysis and psychiatry.
She is currently working on an exhibition departing from the French movement of Institutional Psychotherapy as both subject and methodology. Expanding ongoing research, the project develops engagements with artists, clinics, and organizations in France, culminating in a 2027 exhibition at CAC Brétigny co-curated with Marion Vasseur-Raluy. It investigates experimental clinical practices that challenge fixed relations and roles, enables reconstruction through various modes of plastic expression, and expands the clinical through social and cultural milieus. Through workshops, reading groups, archival research, and site visits, the project fosters exchanges across heterogenous disciplines and audiences.
