Negar Ahkami

Negar Ahkami is an American artist, born in Baltimore in 1971, the daughter of Iranian immigrants. Ahkami is from the New York area, having spent her early years in Clifton, NJ and moved to Manhattan at age 17. She currently lives and works in the DC and New York areas.

Ahkami received a B.A. in Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures from Columbia University in 1992, and a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center in 1997. She spent her childhood and teenage years figure drawing and painting at the Art Students League of New York. She maintained a studio practice and participated in group shows as a young lawyer, including an exhibit curated by artist Nicky Nodjoumi in 1999. The week of 9/11 in New York, Ahkami left her legal career to pursue her art. She participated in Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2004 and received an MFA from School of Visual Arts in NY in 2006. Ahkami's art has been exhibited in the US and abroad in galleries and museums, and is in the permanent collections of The New Britain Museum of American Art, the Depaul University Art Museum, the Farjam Collection (UAE), and other private and corporate collections. Her work has been featured and reviewed in a variety of publications, including The New York Times and ArtNews.

Negar Ahkami's art combines the richness of Persian influences with the individual expressiveness and freedom of her Western influences. Her extensive personal vocabulary of images and playful approach to art-making result is an inventive, ground-breaking body of work. The informed vantage point at which Ahkami stands lends itself to multi-layered conversations that are both a celebration and critique.

From www.negarahkami.com