Laleh Motlagh is a practicing Iranian-Azerbaijani American artist whose work draws from personal and inherited histories that are grounded in lived experience, prolonged observation, and care as a critical method of inquiry. Resilience, fragility, religion, spirituality, place, love, and intimacy are continuous themes that hold her interest and study. Motlagh treats biography as a site of examination and collaboration. Material from the periphery of life is collected and explored. These materials operate as carriers of suppressed histories and negligible ecologies. Through drawing, painting, sculpture, performance, video, and installation, she investigates the boundaries between human and natural life, sociocultural alienation, belonging, exclusion, and borders.

Laleh Motlagh لاله مطلق (b. Tabriz, Iran) is a Chicago-based artist and educator. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at institutions such as Museo Universitario del Chopo (Mexico City, Mexico), EXPO (Chicago, USA), Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts (Chicago, USA), Chicago Artist Coalition (Chicago, USA), KHB Studios (Berlin, Germany), NAHR (Sotechiesta, Italy), Teufelsberg (Berlin, Germany), Gallery 400 (Chicago, USA), Sarv Gallery (Tehran, Iran), Farhang Gallery (Tabriz, Iran) among others. She has received multiple awards and recognitions including Individual Artists Program grant from the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, Newcity’s Breakout Artist, U.S. Fulbright Independent Artist Research grant, Provost’s Award for Graduate Research, and more. Motlagh received her MFA from the University of Illinois Chicago.

Read the review in Newcity Art of Laleh Motlagh’s exhibition at SoNa Chicago.

Care in Observation: A Review of “Entanglement” by Laleh Motlagh at SoNa Chicago