Amir H. Fallah

Amir H. Fallah was born in Tehran, Iran in 1979. He received his BFA from Maryland Institute College of Art in 2001 and his MFA from University of California Los Angeles in 2005. Fallah’s artistic oeuvre incorporates painting, photography, sculpture, and installation though the artist considers himself primarily a painter. His works are profoundly intimate, inspired by youthful memories, cultural traditions and his experience as an immigrant.

Fallah skillfully weaves together themes as disparate as punk rock, plant-life and Persian miniature paintings. His background in graffiti art prompts his method of visual layering and his references to western art history are recontextualized when introduced to the pattern-based visual narratives of Islamic art. Fallah’s understanding of both eastern and western art history provides a platform to investigate themes such as identity, displacement and popular culture.

Solo exhibitions include: The Fallacy of Borders, Fowler Museum at UCLA, Los Angeles, USA (2023);The Facade Project, San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, San Jose, CA, USA (2020); Amir H. Fallah: Scatter My Ashes on Foreign Land, MOCA Tucson, Tucson, AZ, USA (2020); What It Means To Be An American, South Dakota Museum Of Art, Brookings, USA (2019); Unknown Voyage, Schneider Museum of Art, Ashland, Oregon, USA (2017); Almost Home, The Third Line, Dubai (2017); The Caretaker, Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland, USA (2015); Perfect Strangers, 18th Street Arts Center, Los Angeles, USA (2015); The Collected, The Third Line, Dubai, UAE (2013); The Collected, Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco (2013), to name a few. 

Selected group exhibitions include: Perpetual Inventory, Volume 1: An Exercise in Looking, The Third Line, Dubai (2022); A Boundless Drop To A Boundless Ocean, Orlando Museum Of Art, Orlando, NY, USA (2020); There Is Fiction In The Space Between, The Third Line, Dubai, UAE (2020); Horizon, Sharjah Museum of Art, Sharjah, UAE (2018); Unknown Voyage, Schneider Museum of Art, Oregon, USA (2017); Diverge/Convene: Contemporary Mixed Media, San Diego Art Institute, California, USA (2017); We Must Risk Delight-Twenty Artists from Los Angeles, 56th La Biennale di Venezia, Italy (2015); Human Form in Movement, JOYCE Gallery, Hong Kong (2014); I’ll Show You Mine, Palo Alto Art Center, Palo Alto, USA (2014); SUPERCALLAFRAGILEMYSTICEXTASYDIOECIOUS, Lancaster Museum of Art and History, California, USA (2013); Show Off, Salsali Private Museum, Dubai, UAE (2011). 

Fallah received the COLA Artist Fellowship (2020); Northern Trust Purchase Prize, at EXPO Chicago and won The LA County Arts Commission Civic Art Program (2018); the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant in 2015 and participated in the 9th Sharjah Biennial, Sharjah, UAE (2009). 

His works are part of several private and public collections, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum Of Art and History, the Cerritos College Public Art Collection, the Smart Museum of Art, the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, the Salsali Private Museum Collection and the Microsoft Art Collection. He recently was the recipient of the California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artists.

Fallah lives and works in California, USA.