Katherine Zahra Khayami was born in New York City in 2003. Raised by an Iranian immigrant and with a French education, her multicultural upbringing shaped her. She graduated from Emory University in Marketing and Visual Arts. Khayami considers herself a mixed-media artist, creating poetry, photography, collage, graphic design, and projects with photo and text. Self-taught in Adobe Illustrator, in her designs she speaks up about social injustice and violence. Her latest design is an echo of the Zan Zendegi Aazaadi (Women Life Freedom) movement for Iranian women and human rights.

While taking an optional art study in high school, she developed two mixed media projects. The first, “Isolation Diary” is a collection of photos taken at the same location each day during the pandemic lockdown, accompanied by reflective prose poetry. The project is a reflection on the little changes of a monotonous life. She would go on walks to a nearby beach to connect with reality; there, she was healed, liberated, and empowered. The diary includes 26 photos and poems. The second, “Lynn Nottage x Cindy Sherman timecards” is a marriage between the play “Intimate Apparel” and Sherman’s film stills. Khayami recreated 13 stills and connected each one of them to a timecard from the play – highlighting the shared themes of femininity, domesticity, and the American dream.

At Emory as a Visual Arts student, she created a capstone exhibition in the Spring of 2025. Her project “RGBM” consists of a poem and four collages. Each collage is made up of photography and experimental painting. The collages are representations of her experiences with red (light), green (leaves), blue (water), and magenta (sky) in nature.

As the assistant to artist Maryam Khosrovani, she wrote the exhibition statement of her first solo show. Years prior, she also named her exhibition “Imaginary Connections”. In 2023, she was interviewed by the Emory Wheel for their Artist Spotlight article. Khayami has had two works published in Emory’s Alloy Literary Magazine. In October 2025, her poem “An Age” was featured in Rebelle Zine.