Pedram Ziaei was born in 1986 in Saghez, a city in Iran's Kurdistan province, in the second year of the Iran-Iraq War. His family, members of the Bahá'í faith, a persecuted religious minority in Iran, fled the country when he was young, spent eighteen months in exile in Turkey, and resettled in Canada.

He came to art early and through many doors: sculpting, writing, life drawing, music. In 2008 he trained at the Florence Academy of Art's Gothenburg studio, grounding himself in the fundamentals of form and light through intensive charcoal and pencil work. Two years later he entered the film industry, eventually spending over a decade as a compositor and VFX supervisor, including years at Industrial Light & Magic.

For most of that time, the personal work stopped. In 2023 it started again in oil paint, slowly, without a plan. That practice has become the center of his creative life: a direct engagement with form, texture, and memory that the industry years couldn't accommodate.

He lives in Toronto with his wife and daughter.