Azita Moradkhani was born in Tehran where she was exposed to Persian art and culture, as well as Iranian politics, and that double exposure increased her sensitivity to the dynamics of vulnerability and violence that she now explores in her art-making. She received her BFA from Tehran University of Art (2009), and both her MA in Art Education (2013) and her MFA in drawing, painting and sculpture (2015) from Boston’s School of the Museum of Fine Arts and Tufts University.
Moradkhani's work in drawing and sculpture has focused on the female body and its vulnerability to different social norms. It examines the experience of finding oneself insecure in one’s own body. In her drawings, the incorporation of unexpected images within intimate apparel intends to bring humor, surprise, and a shock of recognition. Layers of hazy images reveal stories, with the hope of leaving a mark on the audience. Two worlds–birthplace and adopted home–live alongside each other in her work, joining intimately at a single point.
Moradkhani’s colored pencil drawings of intimate lingerie, negligees, and corsets explore interconnected narratives of pain and pleasure through abstract patterns and images based on photojournalism, art photography, and historical symbolism. She uses eroticism to seduce the viewer, who finds, upon closer inspection, through the layers of colored pencil, past the details of lace and filigree, disruptive iconography narrating inherited histories of nation and belief.
In her sculptural work, through the collaborative process of casting her body, she places herself in a vulnerable situation that challenges beliefs she grew up with. She again mixes imagery—tattoos of memory and history—to emphasize both inter- and dis-connections between sexual representation and national identity, between the public and the private.
She was a recipient of both the Young Masters Art Prize and the Young Masters Emerging Woman Art Prize in London in 2017. She received the Saint Botolph Club Foundation Emerging Artists Grant that same year. The Financial Times (London) reviewed her series of drawings “Victorious Secrets” and The Boston Globe (MA) published reviews of her collaborative performance piece “Irezumi,” and her curated exhibition “Echo” over the past few years.
Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally many times, including at the Royal Academy of Arts (London, UK), Newport Art Museum (RI, USA), and the Museum of Contemporary Art (Yinchuan, China). She has also been a visiting artist/lecturer at universities such as Davidson College (NC), Lesley University (MA), and the Parsons School of Design (NY), as well as a panelist at Harvard University, Southern New Hampshire University, and MIT. She is currently teaching at Parsons School of Design (NY) and Rhode Island School of Design (RI). She has been granted numerous residencies, including Yaddo, Virginia Center For the Creative Arts (VCCA), the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA), Silver Art Projects, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC), and International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP).