Laleh Motlagh

Laleh Motlagh is an Iranian-Azerbaijani American artist whose practice investigates geopolitical and environmental landscapes through lived experience, prolonged observation, and care as a critical method of inquiry. Drawing from personal and inherited histories, her work explores the tensions between resilience and fragility, spiritual intimacy, and systemic control. Motlagh collects, examines, and informally archives materials from the peripheries of daily life, transforming them into carriers of suppressed histories and neglected ecologies. Working across drawing, painting, sculpture, performance, video, and installation, she questions the boundaries between human and botanical life, the admissible and the taboo, and the socio-political realities embedded within discourses of border zones, migration, and belonging. 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.