Katayoun Amjadi

About

Katayoun Amjadi is an Iranian-born, Minneapolis-based artist, educator, and independent curator. In her work, she often considers the sociopolitical systems that shape our perceptions of Self and Other, such as language, religion, gender, politics, and nationalist ideologies. Amjadi blurs these boundaries and creates an off-balance, hybrid style that is slightly acerbic and a little bit tongue-in-cheek. Her art probes the relationship between past and present, tradition and modernity, and individual versus collective identity, and simultaneously seeks to spur discussion about our place in the temporal arc and the interwoven roots of our histories.

Amjadi holds an MFA in ceramics and sculpture from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities and currently serves as the City Artist in Residence Consultant at Public Art Saint Paul. She taught as an adjunct art faculty at Normandale Community College in Bloomington, Minnesota and as a visiting lecturer at the Carleton College, University of Minnesota, and Minneapolis College of Art & Design where she continues to work as an MFA Graduate Mentor. She co-runs a studio arts building and maintains a small ceramics business in the Q.arma Building in the northeast Minneapolis art district.

Her work has been exhibited in several group and solo exhibitions nationally and internationally, including at Minnesota Museum of American Art (St. Paul, MN), Rochester Art Center (Rochester, MN), Weisman Art Museum (Minneapolis, MN), South Dakota Museum of Art (Brookings, SD), Des Moines Art Center (Des Moines, IA), The Soap Factory (Minneapolis, MN), University of St. Thomas (St. Paul, MN), Public Functionary (Minneapolis, MN), Beijing Film Academy (Beijing, China), Karlsruhe Academy of Fine Arts (Karlsruhe, Germany), and Haftsamar Gallery (Tehran, Iran) among others. Selected awards include MCAD-Jerome Emerging Artist (2020/2021), Artist Initiative Grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board (2015/2019), MSAB Creative Individual Grant (2024), and Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship (2025-2028). 

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Statement​

I work primarily as an installation artist. In my work, I seek to draw on multiple cultural histories in ways that explore ideological limitations, and investigate broader global concerns including identity formation, diaspora, nationalism, history, memory, borders, safety, the comfort and unpredictability of home and world, and the poetics of creative expression; synthetic, hybrid, and vital. 

As artist and maker I believe in the latent power of objects to speak. They are embedded with the history of their origin, making and culture. They can carry multiple associations yet also personal and collective meanings as signifiers of a place, time or memory. They are fundamental to my research, indeed they are the structural syllables of the language of my practice.


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