about the artist
Victoria Ahmadizadeh Melendez (she/her, b. 1988) combines poetry, images, glass objects and neon light to create objects and installations that draw inspiration from her Puerto Rican and Persian heritage. She is the inaugural winner of the Adele and Leonard Leight Award, granted in 2024 by the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, KY. She has been an artist in residence at Blue Mountain Center, MASS MoCA, Pilchuck Glass School and the Corning Museum of Glass, among others. Victoria’s work has been shown in dozens of museums and galleries throughout the world including the Museum of Craft and Design, Traver Gallery, Tacoma Museum of Glass, BWA Wrocław and Glasmuseet Ebeltoft. Victoria is passionate about social change and arts education, and was previously the Director of The Bead Project at UrbanGlass, a program geared towards supporting femmes of diverse cultural and economic backgrounds as they learn how to work with glass. She is an Adjunct Associate Professor at Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, PA, from which she received her BFA. She holds an MFA in Craft/Material Studies from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA.
In my work, I combine glass, light, poetry and other materials to create objects and installations. These works navigate and reflect upon the complexities of interpersonal and intergenerational relationships. Family traditions, rituals and immigration stories are current influences. I make contemporary connections to historical forms in decorative art and material culture to tell personal stories.
The aesthetic of the objects I make and the way in which they are arranged is informed by the Zoroastrian haftsin, a table of symbolic objects assembled every spring equinox in celebration of Nooruz, the Persian New Year. In this context, normal objects like flowers, fruit, candles and mirrors can express complex themes of identity, luck, transformation and desire. My father assembled a simplified version of this table every March as I grew up and it captured my imagination.
The ability of glass and light to hold complex emotion and record gesture makes them fluent materials for translating the moments of ineffability in my writing. In my poetry and prose, the speaker longs to transcend heartbreak, diaspora, racism, and the limitations of corporeality itself. These sentiments are what are made tactile in my pieces. Throughout this process, I am fascinated by the ability of objects to be capsules for meaning while also realizing their ultimate ephemerality.
