Amitis Motevalli
Los Angeles, CA
Amitis Motevalli is an artist born in Iran who explores the cultural resistance and survival of people living in poverty, conflict, and war. Through many mediums—including, sculpture, video, performance, and collaborative public art—her work juxtaposes iconography with iconoclasm. Her work intends to ask questions about violence, occupation, and the path to decolonization, while invoking the significance of a secular grassroots struggle. In 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 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 artists and educators.
Ink on graph paper drawing tracing the lineage of the “Montezuma” rose, part of Golestan Revisited. Photo: Ami M.
Installation images of Golestan Revisited at Occidental College. Photo: Ami M.
Image of Fatin shrub rose, part of Amitis Motevalli’s Golestan Revisited. Photo: Ami M.
Amitis Motevalli performs Ruquyya’s Reverberation – Introduction from the Golestan Revisited series. Photo: Ami M.
Amitis Motevalli performs Ruquyya’s Reverberation – Zanjeer Front, from the Golestan Revisited series. Photo: Ami M.
Amitis Motevalli performs Masoul, from the Golestan Revisited series. Photo: Ami M.
Golestan Revisited
Amitis Motevalli is an artist born in Iran who explores the cultural resistance and survival of people living in poverty, conflict, and war.
Artist BioGolestan Revisited is a multimedia, internationally-accessible online database created to research, reclaim, and rename roses transplanted to Europe during the Crusades from the South and West Asian and North African region (known as SWANA), to symbolize and commemorate women, girls, and femmes killed—often while captive in the wars against “terror” and/or by reactive Islamist occupations.