Pantea Karimi is an Iranian-American multi-disciplinary artist, researcher and educator. Her work investigates the intersection of art, science and history and combines visual and conceptual interpretations from her research with contemporary issues and her life narratives. She creates two-dimensional works and interactive installations using a variety of materials and media.
Karimi has exhibited internationally across a range of solo, group and traveling exhibitions in Iran, Algeria, Germany, Croatia, Mexico, the United Kingdom, and the United States. She is the recipient of the 2022 MassMoca Artist Residency, 2020 Holding the Moment Art Award, the 2019 City of San Jose Arts and Cultural Exchange Grant, the 2019 Silicon Valley Artist Laureates Award, and the 2017 Kala Fellowship-Residency Award. Karimi is an Adjunct Faculty at the College of San Mateo and Cabrillo College.
For more information, please see: PanteaKarimi.com, and on Instagram @karimipantea.
Pantea Karimi, Blackboard 7, 2020. Chalk on black paper. 30×44 inches. Image courtesy of the artist.
Pantea Karimi, Blackboard 10, 2020. Chalk on black paper. 30×44 inches. Image courtesy of the artist.
First, and most importantly, how are you doing? How are you navigating the highs and lows?
I am doing fine and have adjusted my teaching schedule and studio routines by now. At times, I navigate my lows by retreating to my art practice in the studio, which automatically adjusts my mood. Other times, connecting with nature is my salvation. I enjoy elevation; I usually like hiking to hilltops and looking at a vast horizon and landscape silently. I use this opportunity to reflect and contemplate.
It's my experience that most artists engage with some level of self-isolation in their day to day art practice. Has this been your experience? And if so, have you found these innate rhythms to be helpful during this larger, world-wide experience of isolation?
I often enjoy self-isolation in my studio while working on a project, but this is nothing close to what this pandemic dictated, especially before vaccines became available. Having said that, yes, I have found these “innate rhythms” somewhat helpful, yet, somewhat unfamiliar; maybe because it was forced rather than chosen by me.
Pantea Karimi, Folding Gardens, A Stained Memory, 2017-2019. Installed at Minnesota Street Project, San Francisco, March 2019. Digital prints on silk organza, rods and threads. Each strip: 10’x 24”, total: 10’x 8’x 8′. Image courtesy of the artist.
Minnesota Street Project, a visitor is walking through the Folding Gardens, A Stained Memory, 2019. Image courtesy of the artist.
It would be great if you could briefly talk us through your practice. Understanding it is integral to appreciating the multivalence of your work.
I am a multi-disciplinary artist with degrees in graphic design (from Tehran, Iran) and fine arts in printmaking and painting (from England and the US). From an early age, I was fascinated by the correlation between abstract ideas in science and their visual representations and studied both science and art in high school. The intense educational system and the societal pressures in post-revolutionary Iran eventually led me away from scientific pursuits into the direction of art as a career.
My current work and research fulfill my continued curiosity about science. In 2014, I began investigating the intersection of art, science and history through medieval Persian, Arab, and early modern European scientific manuscripts mainly in the areas of medicinal botany, astronomy and mathematics. My perspective is also deeply informed by my upbringing in Iran and two subsequent moves to new cultures and countries: firstly the UK and then the US. My work combines threads from my life experiences with conceptual and visual interpretations from my research.
I create interactive installations and two-dimensional works, utilizing drawing, silkscreen, and digital illustration techniques and prints on paper, aluminum and fabric. My interaction with textile started in middle school and continued to high school. We were required to take home economics classes regardless of our areas of study or interests. In the late 80s in Iran, schools used rigid definitions of gender roles while simultaneously provided women with the opportunity to also pursue jobs in science, medicine, engineering, art, and education. This complex picture and the rigid approach at school, however, suppressed my childhood interest in textile works. I resisted embroidery and I saw the medium as a representative of the assigned gender roles. In 2007, after many years of living abroad, I visited Iran. I rediscovered the value of Iranian crafts, particularly as they manifested themselves in textile, fabric design, embroidery, and weaving. This positive encounter was particularly reflected in two different bodies of work I created between 2017 to 2020.
Folding Gardens, A Stained Memory, 2017-2019, an interactive installation, is based on a prominent 12th c. medieval medicinal manuscript, my life narrative, and family’s herbal practice in Shiraz, Iran. The pieces mainly use my digital botanical drawings composed into garden formations and printed on transparent silk organza strips with embroidered silk threads on the bottom as roots. Visitors are encouraged to walk through the transparent gardens.
The other body of work, The Forgotten Women of Science, 2018-2020, was a solo exhibition in early 2020, right before the pandemic lockdown in California, in the San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles, curated by Amy DiPlacido (SJMQT curator). This series is inspired by the 2018 #Metoo movement and brings visibility to contributions of lesser-acknowledged female scientists, up to the 19th c., some of whom were suffragists, avid artists, and educators as well.
Installation at the San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles, Jan-March 2020.
Center: The Other Kind of Embroidery, 2019. Hand-painted embroidery hoops, silkscreen on fabric, hand-embroidered with gold and silver threads. H:66 x W:73 x D:18 inches.Image courtesy of the artist.
Sides: two of the nine panels from the series: An Introduction. Digital illustration and print on fabric. Each panel: 48 x 34 inches.Image courtesy of the artist.
Texts on the wall: from the manuscript, Lectures on Female Education and Manners, by J. Burton, 18thc. I read parts of this book during my extended visit to the Marsh’s Library in Dublin, Ireland.
The Other Kind of Embroidery (detail) installed at San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles, Jan-March 2020. Image courtesy of the artist.
The Other Kind of Embroidery displays the scientific observation of nature and drawings by Mary Ward (Irish scientist and artist, 19thc.). I extracted images from her manuscript, The Microscope, which I studied at the Institute Archives at MIT in 2018.
Has any of your imagery shifted in a reflection to what's currently happening? And why, or why not?
When the pandemic happened, most of my exhibitions and projects got canceled or postponed. Life changed even more dramatically with self-isolation, lockdown, wearing masks and lines outside stores, 6 feet apart, which all affected my demeanor negatively. I was a child when the 1979 Revolution happened following the 8-year Iran-Iraq war. We stayed in lines for food, or other household items, and had to sleep in bomb shelters at nights towards the end of the war. Covid-19 safety protocols have reminded me of my childhood experiences in Iran. All these affected the production of my art in 2020 as well.
Pantea Karimi, Forbidden Objects. Variable dimensions. Image courtesy of the artist.
Visitors, standing on the marked spots forming a line at Mercury 20 Gallery, Oakland, Sep-Oct 2020. Image courtesy of the artist.
The Unbearable Lightness of Mathematics, a solo exhibition at the Mercury 20 Gallery in Oakland, California, in the fall of 2020, was a response to how dark I felt in the age of pandemic. I reconstructed my high school’s classroom and told a personal story of four years of intense science education in the late 80s during the war in post-revolutionary Iran. I created videos and sound recordings, black and white installations, and a series of mock blackboards animated by chalk-written mathematical formulas topped with the phrase In the Name of God in Persian. The content of the mock blackboards gradually faded; a euphemism for the anxiety I felt at the time. White and branded footwear, bright-colored socks, makeup kits, cassettes, and glossy posters of Western celebrities were the forbidden items that kept hundreds of us at the schoolyard before attending our classes. The long lines and the frustrating process of searching for these items by the school authorities were to assure that everyone conformed to the rules of public life in the Islamic Republic of Iran. In the gallery, there were marked spots on the floor, reminders of the long lines in my schoolyard, also familiar during the COVID-19 pandemic. I placed a few “forbidden” objects in a clear box in front of the mock blackboards. The exhibition was well received by those who could visit safely and got a review in SF Weekly.
During those “dark” months, I also created a botanical series called Endemic Healing but with vivid colors and hopeful messages – in two formats of posters, and individuals pieces. I designed my posters in the style of mid-century-modern travel posters that advertised “California Dreaming” at the time. The inspiration for the content stems from my ongoing research on medieval medicinal botany and discoveries of plants that have healing properties – pertinent to COVID-19 symptoms. The series overall communicates a hopeful perspective on life and symbolically posits the path to recovery.
California Healing, one of the posters, received Holding the Moment Art Award by the City of San Jose Public Art Program’s Public Art Initiative, responding to COVID-19. The poster was exhibited at the San Jose Airport in late 2020 and will be part of a large-scale wall projection near the San Jose City Hall in April 2021. Other works in this series were collected by individuals and the UC Davis Medical Group in Roseville, CA.
From March through April 2021, I have been invited to participate in a program commissioned by the City of San Jose Safely Social to design store-fronts to celebrate the reopening of shops. As part of this project, I designed another series of large botanical banners for Crema Coffee Company (my assigned store).
Blackboards 1-10 (white chalk on black papers, each 30×44 inches) and Forbidden Objects (variable dimensions) on view at Mercury 20 Gallery, Oakland, Sep-Oct 2020. Image courtesy of the artist.
Pantea Karimi, Math Notebook. Mixed-media installation wraps around the gallery, variable dimensions. Image courtesy of the artist.
Pantea Karimi, Forbidden Objects. Variable dimensions. Image courtesy of the artist.
Are you thinking differently? Coping differently? Inspired differently?
I think and cope slightly differently but all are nuanced; at times it is quite difficult to reveal or explain those nuances and changes but they are all there. As an artist, naturally, I channel all I feel, positive or negative, through my art. I don’t think I would have created the above two series – The Unbearable Lightness of Mathematics and Endemic Healing if it wasn’t for the pandemic.
On a positive note, I’m now even more inspired by scholars or artists from various countries. I listen to or attend many great (live) Zoom lectures and artist talks from around the world. This was a positive and inspiring outcome due to the pandemic. I even have had the opportunity to collaborate or participate in intriguing events virtually such as participating in The Nature of Cities Festival and Ecological Urban Arts Exhibition in France earlier this year.
What is bringing you solace, or even joy, in this moment?
I don’t take friendship and unions for granted. I am a social person and the thought of having my social life back, sometimes soon, brings me solace and even joy.
Pantea Karimi, Endemic Healing i, ii, and iii, 2020. Digital illustration and print on aluminum. Image courtesy of the artist. The series features medicinal flowers - yarrow, lobelia, and wild columbine - from the states of California, where I live, and New York and Massachusetts, where I have family and friends.
Pantea Karimi,California Healing, poster, 2020. Holding the Moment Art Award, digital illustration, and print on foam board. 36″ x 24″. Image courtesy of the artist.
Installation in San Jose Airport, Terminal B, Nov-Dec 2020.
What research or writing are you doing that you find compelling?
Currently, I am reading about and researching a late medieval Persian geometrical pattern, used in art and architecture. Through my reading, I am discovering Persian geometry as a national identity and “cultural expression.” I plan to create new works inspired by this study for another upcoming solo exhibition at the Mercury 20 Gallery in Oakland in June 2021.
Are you reading anything?
I am reading a couple of books and papers, written by scholars and historians, on the late medieval Persian geometrical pattern.
Pantea Karimi, California Moving Forward (Endemic Healing poster series). 36x24 inches each. Image courtesy of the artist.
Pantea Karimi, The Bay Area Healing (Endemic Healing poster series). 36x24 inches each. Image courtesy of the artist.