Pedram Baldari

Professional Title

Assistant Professor in Stamps School of Art and Design

Department(s)

Art & Design

About

Pedram Baldari is an Interdisciplinary Artist, Architect, and Scholar working in social practice, installation, sound installation, video, performance, sculpture, public art, and community-based work. His research focuses on the exploration of the themes of land through the indigenous-native-stateless lens versus citizenship-state-property, modes of colonialism, displacement-immigration, and conflict. His work is an active search for various forms of facilitating/envisioning realities by transforming/repurposing different means/tools/modes of the culture of violence.

His most recent land art project, The Heart of a Mountain, takes place in his homeland, Rojhelat (Eastern) Kurdistan, where he was born and raised in the city of Sine. This project focuses on the Kurdish ways of stewardship of the environment in Hawraman, where these high-altitude mountains served as a refuge to him and many of his people during the ethnic cleansing campaigns against them in the 80s.

Baldari has been featured in national and international art venues and biennials such as the Victoria&Albert Museum London, Documenta 13th Import-Export, Video Nomad Tokyo, Art Basel Switzerland, Walker Art Museum, Asheville Center for Craft, Weisman Museum, Plains Art Museum, South Dakota Museum of Art, Amarillo Museum of Art, Art Santa Fe Center for Contemporary Art, the Soo Visual Arts Center, and numerous institutions and galleries worldwide.

He has received awards and fellowships from institutions such as Magic of Persia, Jerome Fellowship, and StarDust Foundation. Pedram is named 2021-22 the National Endowment for The Arts Awardee by the MacDowell Foundation. Baldari is the 2022-2023 Luksic Scholars Joint Research Awardee, collaborating with Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and the University of Notre Dame. Recently, he received the 2023 Berlin BBA International Artist Prize. Baldari is the recipient of 2024-2025 The Arts Research: Incubation & Acceleration award, Office of the Vice President of Research and the Arts Initiative.

Pedram has been accepted to residencies internationally, such as Vermont Studio Center 2015-2020, MacDowell Foundation, Yaddo Foundation, Franconia Sculpture Park, Jentel Foundation, Sculpture Space, VCCA, Good Hart Foundation, Kunstferien Letchebach, and Delfina Foundation.

Pedram has worked as an assistant professor in studio art at the University of Minnesota and the University of North Texas. He is currently based in the Detriot Metro Area and is an Assistant Professor of Art and Design at Stamps School of Art and Design at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor.

Research Interests

humanities
social sciences
mixed methods
community-based research
activism
art
ethnicity
performance
transnational
violence (sexual/gender/other)
data visualization
media