Melika Abikenari

Teaching Artist

Melika is an artist and educator based in Brooklyn. She holds a B.A. from UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture and an M.F.A. in sculpture from Cranbrook Academy of Art. An inaugural recipient of the Creatives Rebuild New York grant, Melika recently completed an artist residency program at Textile Arts Center and is an artist-in-residence at Art Cake in Brooklyn. In 2020, Melika received a scholarship from the Anderson Ranch Arts Center and a grant from the Meredith Beau CAA ’97 and Scott Beau Materials Fund. Her work has been exhibited at Textile Arts Center in Brooklyn, NY; Cranbrook Art Museum in Bloomfield Hills, MI; The Sculpture Center in Cleveland, OH; PØST in Los Angeles, The Main Museum; Noysky Projects New Wight Gallery, all in Los Angeles, CA; and ARENA 1 Gallery in Santa Monica, CA; among others. She has worked on curatorial projects at Frogtown Photo Lab and Sculpture Gallery at Broad Art Center, both in Los Angeles. In 2018, she co-led the Intersectional Artivism workshop at the Immigrant Youth Empowerment Conference at UCLA. In the same year, she was interviewed for “Film: Art & Identity,” which was featured in the Anthropological Short Film Festival at UCLA’s Cotsen Institute of Archaeology.