Elham Rokni
Exhibition & Residency:
January 4, 2015 – March 10, 2016

Elham Rokni is the 2016 Soraya Sarah Nazarian Middle Eastern Artist in Residence, made possible by a grant from the Y&S Nazarian Family Foundation.

Born in Iran in 1980, just after the Islamic Revolution, and grew up in Tehran, Elham Rokni has immigrated to Israel at the age of 9. Today she lives and works in Tel­ Aviv. She is a graduate of Bezalel Academy’s BFA (2007) and MFA (2010) programs and is a professor at the Bezalel Academy art department since 2013.

In her drawings and video installations she repeatedly constructs and deconstructs patterns, colors, and shapes that have to do with her childhood memories and family album from Tehran. Central to her ongoing exploration of her past is the question of how images compose memories, emotions and personality. Her work explores an intricate, multifaceted reality, challenging the boundaries of the existing orders, physically as well as politically.

Rokni has participated in many exhibitions and film festivals in Israel and abroad. She has received grants from the Israel Lottery Foundation (2013/2015), a project development grant from Artis organization (2015), The Isracard and Tel Aviv Museum of Art Prize for an Israeli Artist (2013), a young painter prize from the The Osnat Moses Prize (2013). She also received experimental film grants from the Yehushua Rabinovich Tel­ Aviv Foundation (2012) and from the CCA Fund for Video Art and Experimental Cinema in Israel (2010) and received the 2011 Young Artist Prize from the Israeli Ministry of Culture. Her works can be found in various public and private collections.

Artist Website