Negar Ahkami is a painter from the New York area who currently lives and works in Arlington, VA. Ahkami makes expressive, fantastical paintings that reflect her obsession with Persian art and ceramics. Ahkami’s imagined spaces are psychological, gritty, cacophonous, at times satirical –aiming for what she calls “a kind of Persian Expressionism”. The US-born Ahkami spent her childhood and teenage years figure drawing and painting at the Art Students League of New York. She received her BA (magna cum laude) from Columbia University in Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures, a JD from Georgetown University Law Center, and an MFA in Fine Arts from School of Visual Arts, New York. Ahkami has participated in artist residencies such as Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (Skowhegan, ME), the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace Residency and Governor’s Island Residency (both in NY), and a Longterm Residency at Arlington Arts Center (Arlington, VA). Ahkami has had three solo exhibitions in New York — at Leila Heller Gallery and at LMAK Projects in Williamsburg Brooklyn. She has exhibited her work nationally and internationally in art galleries and museums. Her work is represented in numerous public and private art collections, as well as in the permanent collections of the New Britain Museum of American Art, the Depaul University Art Museum, and the Farjam Collection. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, ArtNews, and various publications and exhibition catalogues, as well as Talinn Grigor, Contemporary Iranian Art: From the Street to the Studio (Reaktion, June 2014), Different Sames: New Perspectives in Contemporary Iranian Art Edited by Hossein Amirsadeghi (Thames & Hudson, 2009) and Judith K. Brodsky & Ferris Olin, The Fertile Crescent: Gender Art and Society (The Rutgers Institute for Women and Art, 2012).