Seyed Alavi

Seyed Alavi received a Bachelor of Science degree from San Jose State
University and a Masters of Fine Art from the San Francisco Art Institute.  Alavi’s work is often engaged with the poetics
of language and space and their power to shape reality.

Alavi has created site-specific installations for the New Museum
of Contemporary Art and Franklin Furnace in New York City; the University Art
Museum- Cal State Long Beach; the Museum of Santa Cruz County; the deSaisset
Museum; the University Art Museum, Sonoma State; the University Art Museum, Cal
State San Bernadino and San Francisco’s Capp Street Project.

Alavi’s public art projects include; Fountain Head in Walnut Creek, California; Tree of Life in Seattle, Washington; Room for Hope and Flying Carpet in Sacramento, California; Tale of Time in Kochi, Japan; Seed of Knowledge in Saint Paul, Minnesota;
Nature of Life and A Sense of Unity
in San Jose, California; Signs of the
Time in Emeryville, California; Where
Is Fairfield in Fairfield, California; Words
by Roads in Oakland, California; Selected
Words in San Rafael, California; Forgotten
Language for the City of Palo Alto, California; Speaking Stones, Golden Gateway and What Do You Think? in San Francisco, California.

Alavi has received grants from the NEA/ US-Japan Creative
Artists’ Fellowship; the California Art Council; Western States Arts
Federation; Art Matters Inc.; the Pollock-Krasner Foundation; New Langton Arts;
City of Oakland Creative Artists Fellowship; the Creative Work Fund, and the
LEF Foundation.

Alavi has taught classes and workshops
at the San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, California; California
College of the Arts in Oakland, California; San Francisco State University, San
Francisco, California; the University of California at Davis; San Francisco
Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California; and Yerba Buena Center for the
Arts, San Francisco, California. He has also been a visiting artist at Kyoto
Seika University in Kyoto, Japan, and the California Institute of the Arts in
Valencia, California.