Bios

Amitis Motevalli moved to the US in 1977 just before the Iranian revolution. Her work explores the cultural resistance and survival of people living in poverty, conflict, and war and asks questions about violence, occupation, and the path to decolonization while invoking the significance of a secular grassroots struggle. Through many mediums—including sculpture, video, performance, and collaborative public art— manifested through both stand-alone projects and a variety of ongoing multidisciplinary series, she juxtaposes iconography with iconoclasm. In her recent series Golestan Revisited, Motevalli is working internationally with a broad spectrum of transnational Muslims in order to research what defines home, life, and labor in the urgency of survival. She is particularly concerned with conducting workshops with Muslims who come from places of political and religious conflict and collaborating on public art projects. Motevalli currently lives and works in Los Angeles, exhibiting art internationally as well as organizing to create an active and resistant cultural discourse through information exchange, either in art, pedagogy, or organizing fellow artists and educators.  Motevalli has taught at Claremont Graduate University and Cal State Stanislaus as an artist-in-residence and adjunct professor, and been honored with several awards, fellowships, and residencies in the United States and internationally including both emerging and mid-career awards from the California Community Foundation in 2017 and 2012 respectively, as well as the Vision of California Fellowship by the James Irvine Foundation, a Montalvo Residency, and as the National Endowment for the Arts/Andy Warhol Foundation Fellow at 18th Street Arts Center and with the Danish Ministry of Culture and Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit/Arab American Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. Motevalli holds a Bachelor's in Women’s Studies and Art from San Francisco State University and a Masters of Fine Arts from Claremont Graduate University.