USA Projects

Amitis Motevalli was born in Tehran, Iran and moved to the US in 1977. In 1995 she received a BA from SFSU in Art with a minor in Women's studies and in 1998 an MFA from Claremont Graduate University.  Her work as an artist incorporates a combination of near-eastern aesthetic with a western art education. Motevalli states, "Being an immigrant in the US shows in my work cultural plurality, natural and learned. In all of my work, I create a dialogue that presents alternatives to dominant canons in research and reflection of the present as well as history".

Amitis Motevalli is a recent recipient of the Center for Cultural Innovation Artistic Innovation Award, the California Community Foundation Fellowship and the Visions of California Award, a James Irvine Foundation Fellowship and the NEA/Warhol Foundation artist fellow. Motevalli is also the director of The William Grant Still Arts Center. She 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 artist and educators.