ARTIST BIO

Ari Salka (b. 1993 in Seattle, WA) is a Los Angeles-based artist who primarily works in painting, drawing and writing. Salka holds a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2016) and MFA in Painting from UCLA (2019). Salka also studied at the Yale Norfolk Summer School of Art and received the Ellen Battell Stoeckel Fellowship in Norfolk, CT (2015). Salka’s work has been exhibited at Flower Head, Torrance Art Museum, Cerritos College, Durden and Ray (Los Angeles); Beacon Arts Building (Inglewood, CA); Red Hall Gallery, and SAIC Sullivan Galleries (Chicago).

In Ari Salka: On Bodies (Be)held Trans Rights are Under Siege; This Artist Resists by Julie Schulte for Artillery Magazine in September 2020, Schulte states “Salka’s paintings resist; not only by showing us non-binary bodies, but hands prepared to reach out and lead us beyond the present political limitations, into a realm where these bodies are not withheld from view, not merely visible, but beheld and, most importantly, in their dynamic, breathing, singing, multitudinous forms—held.”