New York artist next up in WMU Frostic School of Art Lecture Series

KALAMAZOO, Mich.--A New York-based sculptor who studied in Iran will be the next speaker in the Frostic School of Art Visiting Artist and Scholar Lecture Series.

Armita Raafat will speak at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 16, in Room 2008 of the Richmond Center for Visual Arts. The Richmond Center is staging the series of lectures in conjunction with its exhibition schedule in support of the thematic approach to its calendar of events.

Armita Raafat

Raafat was born in Chicago and later moved to her parent's native country in the 1980s amid the Iran-Iraq war. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Al-Zahra University in Tehran before returning to Chicago to complete a Master of Fine Arts degree at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2008. She currently lives and works in New York.

Raafat's work has been featured in several solo and group exhibitions in Chicago, New York, New Jersey, Tehran and Seoul, South Korea. Recent solo exhibits have been presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art and the ThreeWalls Gallery in Chicago. Her work also has been featured in several recent group exhibitions in Chicago and New York as well as at Rutgers University.

Raafat's solo exhibitions have been reviewed in several leading art publications, including Art in America. She was a 2009 recipient of a residency with the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and a 2014 Artists in the Market Place residency with the Bronx Museum of the Arts.

Raafat currently holds a studio residency with the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts in New York and is a recipient of a 2014 Peter S. Reed Foundation grant for sculpture.

For more information on the Frostic School of Art Visiting Artist and Scholar Lecture Series, visit wmich.edu/art/exhibitions/visitingartists/.

For more news, arts and events, visit wmich.edu/news.

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