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Amitis Motevalli (born 1969, Tehran, Iran ) is an artist who explores the cultural resistance and survival of people living in poverty, conflict and/or war. Born in Iran and based in Los Angeles, her experience as a transnational migrant is foundational in her work. Through many mediums—including, sculpture, video, performance, and collaborative public art—her work juxtaposes iconography with iconoclasm. Her work asks questions about violence, occupation, and the path to decolonization while invoking the significance of a secular grassroots struggle.

Biography
Amitis Motevalli was born in 1969 in Iran where her family has been the caretakers of a Shia shrine in the city of Sari for generations and whose name, Motevalli, translates to “Keeper of the Shrine.” Her family immigrated to the United States in 1977 just before the Iranian Revolution. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in Women's Studies and Art from San Francisco State University and a Master of Fine Arts degree from Claremont Graduate University.

Motevalli received two awards from the California Community Foundation, including a mid-career award in 2012. Fellowships and residencies have included Montalvo Center for the Arts, a National Endowment for the Arts/Andy Warhol Foundation Fellowship at 18th Street Arts Center, the Danish Ministry of Culture, and Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit/Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.

In 2020, she received a Creative Capital Award for her artistic activism and data visualization project Golestan Revisited

Her work has been featured in exhibitions and performances at, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, NEED CV

Pedagogical Work
Motevalli was an arts educator at Locke High School in South Central Los Angeles beginning in 1999. She worked with students and their families to organize the Locke Student Union to gain basic civil rights at the high school for her students. She fought in particular for the right to privacy against profiling and students being pulled out of class for searches of students “search and seizure”. She was unlawfully dismissed by the Los Angeles Unified School District for this work which resulted in a lawsuit against LAUSD for violating her 1st Amendment rights to speak out on behalf of her students. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2002-oct-19-me-locke19-story.html https://www.laweekly.com/locke-down/

Since 2010, Motevalli has been the director of The William Grant Still Arts Center, a historic publicly-funded community arts center in South Central Los Angeles operated by the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, Preceding this, she was first was Education Coordinator since 2005. The center has deep roots in the 1970s Black Arts Movement <>. Her work at the intersection of education, art and community history at the Center includes offering classes, workshops, and exhibitions exploring intersections of the West Adams neighborhood and grassroots archives on topics including transnational feminism, AIDS, the Black LGBT community histories, artwork by incarcerated and formerly political prisoners, and Black American composers across many genres. Under her leadership, the community’s over 40-year tradition of the William Grant Still Arts Center Black Doll Show has continued to be the city’s longest-running exhibition, the longest-running black doll show in the US, and was a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts grant in 2017.

Motevalli has also taught as an artist-in-residence and adjunct professor at Claremont Graduate University, California State University Stanislaus, Syracuse Graduate Art Program. In 2024, she became the first fellow in bla bla bla.

Numerous collectives with SWANA/Middle Eastern women and non-binary femmes including XXX, XXX, XXX.

Significant Works
Fannie Lou Hamer (2010) https://sfonline.barnard.edu/reading-fannie-lou-hamer-in-tehran-amitis-motevallis-queer-art-of-afro-asian-solidarity/

Baba Karam (2010) https://themarkaz.org/baba-karam-lessons-artist-amitis-motevalli/

Borrowing Authority from Death (2021) https://watson.brown.edu/cmes/events/2023/amitis-motavelli-borrowing-authority-dead

Sand Ninja (@ the Zona Rosa)

Khar va Attar- The Thorn and the Healers (2022)

https://amitismotevalli.com/about-1#/press/