Pantea Karimi is a multidisciplinary artist based in San Jose, California. She worked and studied in Iran and the UK before settling in the U.S. in 2005. Her experiences as an Iranian woman and two-time immigrant have been profoundly shaped by war, religion and geopolitics. This displacement has led her to explore themes of tension and identity politics in her art. Simultaneously, she has investigated harmony through the study of botany and geometry, primarily from medieval Iran in Western archives, as these subjects reflect her cultural heritage and family history and practice in Shiraz. After the Iranian women’s uprising in 2022, Karimi began incorporating themes of female sovereignty and bodily autonomy into her work, bridging her research and collective lived experiences. She utilizes a range of 2-D and 3-D media including virtual reality, animation, sound, drawing, print, performative video, and installation.
Utilizing multimedia and installation and juxtaposing harmony and tension, Karimi creates syncretic imagery and narratives to claim female agency and highlight her cultural heritage as it intertwines with geopolitical tensions.
Karimi’s works have been exhibited in solo, group, and traveling exhibitions in Iran, Algeria, Germany, Croatia, Mexico, the UK, and the United States, including San Jose City Hall, San Jose Tech Interactive, San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, New Bedford Art Museum, The San Diego Museum of Art, Montefiore Einstein in NY, McMullen Museum of Art in Boston, and Rotch Library at MIT. Karimi’s works are held in private and public collections at YouTube HQ, Stanford University, University of California San Francisco, and University of California Davis. KQED Arts & Culture published an article on Karimi’s 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom work followed by a live interview on KQED Forum, aired on April 26, 2023
Karimi is a 2024 City of San Jose Creative Ambassador, a 2023 Kala Art Institute Honoree, and a 2019 Silicon Valley Artist Laureate. She is the recipient of Pollock-Krasner Foundation Artist Grant (2022), City of San Jose Arts and Cultural Exchange Grant (2019) and Artist Residencies at MASS MoCA (2022 and 2024), Santa Fe Art Institute (2024), Montalvo Art Center’s Lucas Program (2024-2026), University of California San Francisco Library (2021-2022) and Kala Art Institute Fellowship (2017).
Karimi holds Master’s Degrees in both Graphic Design and Fine Arts and is a member of the international discussion group Substantial Motion Research Network (SMRN), affiliated with Simon Fraser University in Canada.
Photos by Carolina Porras Monroy, Studios at MASS MoCA, May 2022.