Statement
Pantea Karimi’s multidisciplinary practice—spanning printmaking, animation, video, sculpture and installation—explores harmony and tension through syncretic imagery that foregrounds female agency. Rooted in her family’s practice in Shiraz, her work merges research in geometry and medicinal botany with reflections on her transnational life and the impact of geopolitical forces.
Biography
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 mother, a history teacher, stimulated her interest in art and history. Her grandmother, the family herbalist, inculcated a lifelong connection to botany. Her father, a mathematician and architect, inspired her interest in geometry. At 14, she began her training in fine arts and classical music alongside science studies at school in post-revolutionary Iran.
Pantea 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 in Massachusetts, Montefiore Einstein in NY, Rotch Library at MIT, and The San Diego Museum of Art and McMullen Museum of Art in Boston as part of 2024 PST ART: Art & Science Collide, represented by the Getty.
Karimi’s works are held in both private and public collections, including YouTube HQ, Stanford University, the University of California, San Francisco, the University of California, Davis, and the permanent collections of the Cities of Palo Alto and Berkeley. 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 Artist Program (2024-2026), University of California San Francisco Library (2021-2022) and Kala Art Institute Fellowship (2017).
Pantea Karimi holds two Master’s Degrees in Graphic Design and Fine Arts. She is a member of the international discussion group, Substantial Motion Research Network (SMRN), affiliated with Simon Fraser University in Canada, founded by Dr. Azadeh Emadi and Dr. Laura U. Marks.
Photos by Carolina Porras Monroy, Studios at MASS MoCA, May 2022.