MELIKA ABIKENARI
Melika Abikenari is an artist and educator based in Brooklyn. Her work explores the enduring and evolving nature of experience and memory. She is currently doing research on transgenerational inheritance of trauma and memory in relation to state violence and the forces and consequences of displacement. She is committed to an interdisciplinary approach both in research and production.
Abikenari holds a B.A. from the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture and an M.F.A. in sculpture from Cranbrook Academy of Art. An inaugural recipient of the Creatives Rebuild New York grant, Abikenari recently completed the artist-in-residence program at Textile Arts Center in Brooklyn, NY. Her work will be included in Liminality, a group exhibition at the Textile Arts Center (SEPT 1 - 25, 2022).
In 2020, Abikenari received a scholarship from the Anderson Ranch Arts Center and a grant from the Meredith Beau CAA ’97 and Scott Beau Materials Fund. Her work has been exhibited at Cranbrook Art Museum (Bloomfield Hills, MI), The Sculpture Center (Cleveland, OH), PØST (Los Angeles, CA), The Main Museum (Los Angeles, CA), Noysky Projects (Los Angeles, CA), New Wight Gallery (Los Angeles, CA), and ARENA 1 Gallery (Santa Monica, CA), among others. She has worked on curatorial projects at Frogtown Photo Lab (Los Angeles, CA), Sculpture Gallery at Broad Art Center (Los Angeles, CA), and Trunk Gallery (Los Angeles, CA). In 2018, she co-led the Intersectional Artivism workshop at the Immigrant Youth Empowerment Conference at UCLA. In the same year, she was interviewed for “Film: Art & Identity,” which was featured in the Anthropological Short Film Festival 2018 at UCLA’s Cotsen Institute of Archaeology.
