DC Area Art Event on June 27th: Y'All Go Rhythm

I would like to welcome you to a free, public art event. At this art happening, people of all ages can view (and dance on) my new art installation of interactive dance platforms. A DJ will play Iranian dance music mixed in with familiar dance floor anthems. There will also be Persian poetry, and an art activity table. The event will take place on Saturday June 27th, 5-8 PM, at MoCA Arlington, 3550 Wilson Boulevard, in Arlington, VA, 22201 (indoors, in the museum’s Tiffany Room).

This event, and the dance platforms, are part of an ongoing art project that I call, Y’All Go Rhythm.

About Y’All Go Rhythm

Y’All Go Rhythm is an art installation of interactive, light-up dance platforms inspired by vibrant patterns in Iranian art and architecture. Why an Iranian-inspired dance floor? Because Persian patterns are dynamic and exuberant, just like Iranians dancing at Persian holidays and gatherings. Iran’s dance floor-loving culture runs counter to misconceptions and endures against all odds.

Growing up in the US, my immigrant parents organized Persian New Year parties for the Iranian Diaspora in the 80s and 90s. I witnessed people of all ages dance joyfully together, and shed pain, amidst traumas of losing their country and migration. In countess other dance floors, with people from other cultures and subcultures —I have observed people similarly dancing to shed pain, and to feel joy and connection. In challenging times, I seek the wisdom and light of these experiences.

Through this project, I hope to bring some light in darkness, and create an embodied understanding of ways in which humanity and cultures are interconnected. More broadly, Y’All Go Rhythm is a call to action, to get on the floor and dance; to preserve tactile, hand-made creativity in this digital era, and to insist on higher values of uplifting, welcoming, and coming together.

This project is supported in part by an individual artist grant from Arlington County through the Arlington County Cultural Affairs division of Arlington Economic Development and the Arlington Commission for the Arts.

Above Photos by Jamie Kimball, 2025. Artwork Copyright Negar Ahkami 2025- present All rights reserved,

Voice of America Farsi Interview

Voice of America Persian visited my recent exhibition at Arlington Arts Center. The written interview and the filmed interview (translated into Farsi) are linked below.

Even if you don’t understand Farsi/Persian, the filmed interview is a really great way to see my exhibition, Le Caftan, Le Turban at Arlington Arts Center. Film footage of my paintings is a much better way to capture the rich & visually alive textures and surfaces in my work —so much better than photographs!

Note, links below will exit you out of my website. Feel free to press your go back arrow to get back!

Here is the link to the video: VOICE OF AMERICA INTERVIEW

Here is a link to the written interview (in Persian): Text version of interview

Art Conversation: "Le Caftan, Le Turban"

I was thrilled to go deeper into the ideas about my recent solo exhibition at Arlington Arts Center, “Le Caftan, Le Turban” with curator and scholar Donna Honarpisheh. This conversation is moderated by Amanda Jirón-Murphy (who curated the show).

Recent Zoomversation w/curator Blair Murphy

This is an image-filled conversation about my interactive dance platform piece After Winter Must Come Spring. It is a propos of the universal desire for joyful escape, and a long-brewing idea that finally made its way out due to peak-depression about dehumanizing news, and the vital support of an arts organization where the work was made. Have a watch when you have time —it’s 22 minutes long, and worth waiting until the end.

The Janet & Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize Finalists Exhibition

For my exhibition at the Walters Art Museum, I wanted to create my own “museum section" inspired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s “Islamic” section of my youth, and by the Iranian art in the Met’s collection that had transformed me. Included in my show, are diverse works inspired by (albeit loosely, taking great liberties) Iran’s ornate, tiled mosque architecture, the Persian manuscript, the Persian carpet, an Iranian mehrab, and Iranian ceramics. Like the distinctive works in museum Islamic sections, there is an overarching unity: it all comes from the same notion of place. The work in my show all comes from the same psychic place.

For my exhibition, I looked to the Walters Art Museum’s permanent collection and curatorial displays thereof . I chose a wall color that speaks to Islamic art collections in various museums. I wanted to replicate the feeling I have in a museum of exuberant areas that jump out, as well as quieter, intimate areas of discovery. I wanted to replicate the deep feelings that I have when looking at Iranian art in museums like the Met and the Walters. The way these works communicate with each other across the room —and across separate museum sections deemed “Western” —is not, for me, a subtle experience. These deeply-felt relationships scream loudly, and the rhythmic patterns pulsate in variation and unity, like strangers dancing to the same music in a club. In my paintings, I strive to harness Persian’s art’s expressive potential, with its dizzying, visceral experience of constant “eye travel” across jewel-like, complexly-patterned surfaces.

In my Sondheim exhibition, I wanted to tell a complex story of Iran’s rich visual legacy and its relevance, often taken for granted. The works speak to Giving (as in Iran’s gifts of ornamentation, hospitality, fantastica, and escapist pleasure), and Taking (as in unacknowledged cultural appropriation). My intent, in this 40th year of depressing US-Iranian geopolitics, was an in-your-face, maximalist, tribute: (1) to Iran’s art, (2) to its flamboyant humanity and (3) to the fraught and beautiful connections that exist between us, that have existed through the ages.

Click below on image for slideshow of 6 images. Images below relate to (1) America’s cartoonish, Islamophobic view of Iran from a distance; (2) An in-your-face, maximalist tribute to Iranians from the inside —a flamboyant humanity, for which hospitality, ornamentation, and a sense of rhythm is a birthright; (2-5) A reclaiming of Orientalist tropes, with tributes to Persian sources of inspiration; (5-6) The fraught and beautiful intersections of Western art and fashion that appropriates Persian and Islamic art; (6) A mehrab-like abstraction that revels in connections between Persian art and Hispano-Moresque + Maiolica ceramics, Matisse, and 1970s mattresses.

The Taking, Cody Gallery at Marymount University

Below are some installation shots and the press release from my recent show at Cody Gallery, which got a nice mention in the Washington Post here.

Cody Gallery at Marymount University is pleased to present The Taking, a solo exhibition by Negar Ahkami. The Taking consists of conceptually linked paintings covering a range of themes, and a monumental installation of fragmented pieces made to appear as broken ceramic shards. The exhibition examines varied instances of appropriation of Persian art and culture in Western civilization, from ancient periods to present day’s politics. In The Taking, Ahkami weaves a narrative that serves as a reminder that history and recollection, while often fragmented and broken, may be retold.

The Taking is named after the installation of 29 painted fragments and accompanying wall text. Mimicking a museum display of archaeological artifacts, the fragments depict details of actual source material such as paintings, photographs, textiles, ceramics, reliefs and architectural motifs. Each fragment was chosen for its connections to the rich visual legacy of Iran and its neighbors. These details are pulled from a wide range of sources including: an Italian altarpiece, Ancient Greek pottery, a carpet found in a Vermeer painting, and Majolica tiles. At first glance, they may be identified as primarily Western however, the wall text identifies the sources and treats Persian and Ancient Near Eastern contributions as central instead of footnoted. The Taking acknowledges these forgotten sources while simultaneously taking liberties, building a narrative from scraps, and finding both pride and courage in new discoveries.

Also included in the exhibition is a range of fantastical paintings that both inspire and are inspired from The Taking. The exuberant paintings highlight the ambiguous state of fear and adoration often realized encountering different cultures, often stereotyped as "Other."  Ahkami depicts enthrallment with exotic stimuli in “The Caftan” –part Orientalist satire, part loving tribute to the escapism of material pleasures.  In this painting, as is typical of Ahkami’s practice, Ahkami builds bas-reliefs of gesso, and paints in repeated glazes of acrylic paint. The effect resembles Iranian ceramic traditions, at the same time as it conjures global iterations of blue and white ceramics and Majolica.  In Iranian ceramics, Ahkami finds real global connections as well as a freeing, unrestrictive sense of the hand that serves her expressionistic impulses.

Click on images below to view slideshow of installation shots:

Fantasy Will Set You Free

April 14 - June 2, 2018 @ Arlington Arts Center

As part of my longterm artist residency at Arlington Arts Center (which generously grants me a semi-subsidized studio for 6 years), I have this solo show up:

Arlington Arts Center is pleased to present in the Wyatt Resident Artists Gallery the exhibition of resident artist Negar Ahkami, Fantasy Will Set You Free. Negar Ahkami’s expressive, tactile paintings are inspired by Iranian art, and by global visual traditions that intersect with Iran’s rich art history. Ahkami’s emphasis on rhythm and viscerality is inspired by NYC street art of the 1980s and German expressionism. The imagined dancers in Fantasy Will Set You Free invoke dance floors of the artist’s youth: in New York City night clubs, and at parties organized by Ahkami’s parents for the growing Iranian immigrant community in the 1980s and 1990s.

In placing Iranian art and humanity in a broader, joyful context, and in her piece After Winter Must Come Spring -- in part magic carpet, in part interactive dance floor-- Ahkami is continuing her longtime engagement with Orientalism and stereotype subversion. Above all, Fantasy Will Set You Free is an impassioned escape from depressing news, for the viewer as well as the artist. Ahkami relives the spirit of the dance floor in her studio practice, by getting lost in spontaneous gestures, flamboyant poses, and a riot of rhythmic patterns.

Exhibition in Chicago at Depaul Art Museum

I just found out that I am in the exhibition, Fires Will Burn: Politically Engaged Art from the Permanent Collection at the DePaul Art Museum in Chicago.  The DePaul acquired my dizzying, politically packed 2003 Work on Paper, "As I Sit Here Musing, Fires WIll Burn."  I am so proud they featured this work amongst Diego RIvera and other important political works in their collection.  It's also cool to see part of my title as the title for the exhibition.  

The exhibition dates are July 10 - December 21, 2014

DePaul University Art Museum, 935 West Fullerton, Chicago, IL  60614

The Museum is closed Mondays and Tuesdays.  Open Wed-Thursday From 11-7, Friday 11-5, Sat-Sun 12-5. Admission is free.

For more information about the exhibition and the museum, see source link below.

Affordable Prints of my work on 20x200's website

I am so honored to be working with Jen Bekman's amazing site 20x200, which has issued limited edition prints of one of my favorite paintings, "Backsplash".  The original painting from 2010 is in the permanent collection of the New Britain Museum of American Art in New Britain Connecticut.  

Order one for yourself, for a friend, or family.  20x200 makes it super easy!  Here is the link to order, and for more background about the piece:

20x200 Negar Ahkami: Backsplash

Welcome to my new website!

This website is very much a work in progress.  Please bear with me as I figure it out.  My former website was from 2007. It was time to update. 

Something to keep in mind as you look at these images : I do not paint in a series for a particular exhibition.  I work through my genuine obsessions. I find myself returning to certain themes and symbols until they might (or might not) work themselves out of my system.  

On this site, I have decided to regroup my works according to basic categories even if they were not painted with the intention of fitting into such particular categories.   Basic patterns in the work reveal themselves over time.  This is why you might notice a broad spectrum of dates within categories of images, like Landscapes and Odalisques.