Katayoun Amjadi invites us to take a closer look at objects around us

“All of us are mini museums,
we collect things.”

– Katayoun Amjadi

What do the tactile things we keep with us say about what we might miss, who we were and who we become? 

Katayoun (Kat) Amjadi is a Northeast Minneapolis Arts District installation and ceramic artist working out of the Q.arma Building and, recently, a teacher at Normandale Community College and adjunct faculty member/mentor at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. 

Her work often incorporates objects and materials in ways that encourage the viewer to think further about the physical world around them and to question not only how things come to be but why and the “who” behind their creation. She spoke recently about the symbolism of objects and the meanings to be found even in the most commonplace items. “Looking at objects, similar to names, as symbols that can carry meaning.” 

Amjadi’s most recent exhibition, “So Far, So Close,” at the Q.arma Underground Gallery, 1224 Quincy St. NE,  leveraged this language of material to think through what makes a culture and keeps it close, particularly for emigrants who leave a specific geography. 

From painted silk screens to ceramics in the shape of cigarettes, Amjadi explored the physical and thematic weight and lightness of items carried and the things that are unseen. A cigarette, often a ubiquitous form known for its disposability, rendered in clay could become a burden or, wrapped in the language of a national brand, a more steadfast look at longing. 

Amjadi’s interdisciplinary work highlights a conversation around “low art” and “high art” and specifically questions whether something crafted commercially is also art and whether consumers of everyday objects are, in a sense, art critics, in a way. As goers to the “galleries” of life and production, in what ways do we all interact with material, in what way can materials provide insights into life and the myriad ways it is lived and ended? 

Within this look at objects are the stories we tell ourselves. Our “national” brands open windows into histories bleak, familiar or new to us. But these looks into history are anything but straightforward. They can offer shade and nuance and leave the viewer with more to learn and an awareness of the vastness of what is unknown, from the Aliya brand of cigarette, which Amjadi picked up in Jerusalem, to the Bahman brand whose name in the Persian language means “Snow Avalanche.” The word also signifies the 11th month of the Persian calendar year, February. The month of February itself, in 1979, was the month of the revolution that ushered in the Islamic Republic of Iran and is considered a main cause of the Iranian diaspora today. 

Amjadi is also conscious of the nature of art at the fault lines of history and culture. She noted the challenge in presenting art that leverages multiplicity in language, despite an ideal of visual art being “understandable” when presented for viewing. “The process of art, at least for me, is double translation.” 

As a 2025-28 Jerome Hill Fellow, she looks forward to working through some of these complexities while fully acknowledging that the complexities themselves can be an important part of the journey of understanding. From the use of two languages in the presentation of the art itself, to knowing that everyone, from Iranian immigrants, to the community who might know very little about Iran’s history, the pieces might be disparate, but it’s the pieces that give us a closer look at the whole. 

From the items and objects we can learn what is important, serious, comedic or valued about humanity as a whole and its particularities. As a Jerome Hill Fellow, Kat Amjadi will continue the work of putting pieces together and looking at the big picture through the microscopic lenses we each carry with us. “That’s part of my ongoing investigation, coming in the fellowship year … that gap … how you would be able to translate. The object by itself can’t speak if it’s not accessible.”