Ramyar Vala (b. 1986, Tehran, Iran) is a multidisciplinary artist and designer living and working in Chicago. His early practice was as a graphic designer in Tehran, where he was a member of Studio Tehran. Though still grounded in design and fabrication, his research tracks the functionality of crafted objects and the stories behind cultural ornamentation. Ramyar’s multi-disciplinary practice explores the inner lives and circulation of traditional motifs— tracing how they travel, transform, adjust, and disappear trans-nationally and trans-culturally — through sculpture, installation, and video.
As a graphic designer, he exhibited his typographical posters in several international biennales, including the Lahti Poster Triennial/Lahti Art Museum, Moscow International Biennale of Graphic Design/Golden Bee 9, The 7th Trnava International Poster Triennial/Galéria Jána Koniarka v Trnava.
His work has been exhibited in a multitude of international exhibitions, including New Museum (New York), Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago), EXPO Chicago, and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco). Most recent exhibitions include: 2017 “Brown People Are the Wrens in the Parking Lot”, The Logan Center Gallery, Chicago; “Bread and Salt Symposium”, The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation, New York; “Front and Center “, Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago; “Challenges of Imagination”, Lecture-Performance, Northwestern University, Chicago and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; “The Dangerous Professors”, Triumph, Chicago; 2016 “Lucciche”, Simposio di VideoArte – VideoArt Symposium, Carrara, Italy; 2015 SCOPE | International Contemporary Art Show, Miami; Expo Chicago, The University of Chicago Headquarters 3.0, Chicago; Fifth Annual Exposure Award, Musee du Louvre, Paris; 2014 “Lahti Poster Trienniel”, Lahti Art Museum; “Golden Bee 9”, Moscow International Biennale of Graphic Design; and The 7th Trnava International Poster Triennial, Galéria Jána Koniarka v Trnava.
