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 teaches in the Art Department at Normandale Community College in Bloomington, Minnesota. She also teaches as a visiting lecturer at the Minneapolis College of Art & Design and the University of Minnesota. 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), The Soap Factory (Minneapolis, MN), University of St. Thomas (St. Paul, MN), Public Functionary (Minneapolis, MN), Beijing Film Academy (Beijing, China), Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Karlsruhe (Karlsruhe, Germany), and Haftsamar Gallery (Tehran, Iran) among others. Selected fellowships include 20/21 MCAD-Jerome Emerging Artist Fellowship, and Artist Initiative Grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board in 2015 and 2019. Amjadi co-runs a studio arts building and maintains a small ceramics business in the Q.arma Building in the northeast Minneapolis art district.

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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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