Laleh Motlagh is an Iranian-Azerbaijani American artist based in Chicago whose practice unfolds as sustained research grounded in engagement with sociopolitical and environmental landscapes through lived experience, prolonged observation, material inquiry, and care as a critical method. Drawing from personal and inherited histories, her work examines love and intimacy, resilience and vulnerability, religion and spirituality, and the politics of belonging, while remaining deeply connected to her surroundings and localities. Motlagh approaches biography not as self-expression but as a site of inquiry, working through the collection and informal archiving of unwanted natural materials: her 150+ houseplant remnants and urban weeds that exist at the margins of visibility and value. Rather than functioning symbolically, these materials operate as carriers of suppressed histories and negligible ecologies. Across drawing, painting, sculpture, performance, video, and installation, she examines the boundaries between human and natural life, interior and exterior, the admissible and the taboo, as well as the geopolitical overtones found so prevalently in the discourse of border zones and notions of 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 Driehaus Museum (Chicago, USA), Museo Universitario del Chopo (Mexico City, Mexico), EXPO (Chicago, USA), 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.

Full CV is available upon request.