Sepideh Kalani

Sepideh Kalani is an Iranian-born ceramic artist based in Miami, Florida. She holds an MFA in Ceramics from the University of Miami, where she studied on a full scholarship, and a BA in Fine Arts from the University of Guilan in Iran. Her sculptural practice explores identity, memory, and cultural transformation through personal narratives and historical research, particularly the visual language of the Qajar era, often regarded as the beginning of modernity in Iran.

Kalani’s work has been exhibited in Iran and the United States at venues including the Lowe Art Museum, the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (UMOCA), the Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia (BHMVA), the Bernice Steinbaum Gallery, and the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) Multicultural Exhibition, where her work has been featured for three consecutive years. Her work has also been selected for two upcoming NCECA 2027 exhibitions: the NCECA Annual Exhibition, curated by Adriana Proser and Ellen Hoobler and hosted by the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, and NCECA’s Beginnings exhibition. She is currently an artist-in-residence at Oolite Arts as part of its second-year Studio Residency program and has participated in residencies at Penland School of Craft, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, and MASS MoCA.

Her work has received several awards, including the José Bernardo Ceramics Award, the Miami Individual Artist (MIA) Grant, and the Multicultural Fellowship for the Women Working with Clay Symposium (2026), among others.

Kalani’s interdisciplinary interests in cognitive science, psychology, history, storytelling, architecture, Persian miniature painting, and ceramic figuration deeply inform her practice. Her sculptures emerge from an imaginative and psychologically driven inner world, often exploring recurring patterns in human behavior and the lasting impact of childhood experiences. In her recent work, she focuses on porcelain to create figurative sculptures informed by historical and psychological research. Rooted in her lived experience as a woman from Iran, her work considers the body as a site of tension, resilience, and transformation, expressed through delicate yet emotionally charged forms.