Artist Statement

Melika Abikenari is an Iranian-born Brooklyn-based artist who works in an array of mediums, including performance, installation, sculpture, textile, and video. Her practice investigates the enduring and evolving nature of the intergenerational inheritance of memory, matrilineality, and the body in relation to state violence and the forces and consequences of displacement. Through research, material investigation, and site-responsive installations, she explores safety and protection in relation to individual and collective processes of somatic and psychological healing. Drawing inspiration from the historical significance of felt-making and clay in Iran, she integrates these materials as organs in the transfer of body and brain memory into/onto vessels that contain histories, voices, traumas, and means of survival passed within and through generations.

Biography

Melika Abikenari is a Brooklyn-based artist, educator, and organizer. She holds a BA from UCLA (2017) and an MFA in Sculpture from Cranbrook Academy of Art (2021). She is currently a 2026 artist-in-residence at NARS Foundation and has participated in the New York Foundation for the Arts Immigrant Artist Program, in addition to completing residencies at Cerámica Suro, Art Cake, and Textile Arts Center. Abikenari is a recipient of the Creatives Rebuild New York grant, the Anderson Ranch Arts Center 2020 Scholarship Partnership Program, and the Meredith Beau CAA ’97 and Scott Beau Materials Fund. Her work has been exhibited at the Bronx Council on the Arts (Bronx, NY), New York Live Arts (New York, NY), M. David & Co (Brooklyn, NY), Art Cake (Brooklyn, NY), Cranbrook Art Museum (Bloomfield Hills, MI), The Sculpture Center (Cleveland, OH), and The Main Museum (Los Angeles, CA), among others.