Portfolio: Y.Z. Kami

Born in 1956 in Tehran, Iran into a Shia family, Y.Z. Kami is an acclaimed artist living in New York City. In The Guardian, critic Laura Cumming praised Kami’s paintings in a solo exhibition at Gagosian Gallery, London in 2015: “How can one depict the inner being, the private thoughts, the spiritual beliefs? Kami is prodigiously aware of the limitations of portraiture. Yet it is obvious from these paintings, with their intense aspect of interiority, of trying to make visible the invisible, that he is thinking about this dimension of our lives as few other contemporary painters.” Along with a career-long focus on portraiture, Kami has also created more abstract, geometric works in his “Endless Prayers” series. In this issue, we are featuring four paintings as well as two mixed media works from the “Endless Prayers” series. In Artforumin 2016, Myrna Ayad called one of Kami’s exhibitions, with this combination of paintings and mixed media works, “a prayer for the soul.” 

Kami received his B.A. and M.A. in 1981 from the University of Paris-Sorbonne, France, and afterward he studied at Conservatoire Libre du Cinema, Paris, in 1982. Kami’s portrait series “In Jerusalem” was included in the 52nd Biennale di Venezia in 2007. Recent solo museum exhibitions include: “Perspectives,” Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. in 2008; “Beyond Silence,” National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens in 2009–2010; and “Endless Prayers,” Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California in 2016–2017.