Formal elements, skill and delicacy connect Azita Moradkhani’s work aesthetically to the art of the past. In taking representation and realism to the contemporary art scene, beauty is her weapon to make political points aesthetically approachable. The female body is central to her work, specifically its exposure to different social norms. It is about the displacement experienced when we find ourselves insecure in our own bodies. The artist wants to challenge viewers to recognise the significance of beauty and the body, and how they work together in so many of the images made available to us. Moradkhani’s refined form, detail, colour palette and technique of representation allow her to find the hidden layers of complex socio-political perceptions in a global context.
Born 1985, Iran, Moradkhani received her BFA from Tehran University of Art (2009), and both her MA in Art Education (2013) and her MFA in drawing, painting & sculpture (2015) from Boston’s School of the Museum of Fine Arts & Tufts University. Moradkhani was a recipient of both the Young Masters Art Prize and the Young Masters Emerging Woman Art Prize in London in 2017 and also received the Saint Botolph Club Foundation Emerging Artists Grant that same year. She was juried into the prestigious Medal Award Gala auction at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in 2015. Her solo exhibition Victorious Secrets was held at Gallery Kayafas, Boston, 2016. Moradkhani participated in the following group exhibitions: Becoming, The Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute, Utica, NY, 2018; New Voices, Masculinity, Museum of Art, University of New Hampshire, 2017; New Visions, Saint Botolph Club Foundation Emerging Artists Grant, Boston, MA; and South Asia Exchange: Thoughts, Responses and Questions, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2015.