Biography

Born in Mumbai 1976, India, Avani Patel was immigrated to Pennsylvania with her family at 11 years old. She holds a BA from the Penn State University and an MFA from Tyler School of Arts (Temple University). Her cultural background has had a profound impact on the forging of her identity as an artist. As a young girl living in India, she fell in love with the patterns of dresses, exotic colors, the sound of music, as well as the spectacle of both theatre and cinema. They were all fluidly interconnected, effectively symbolizing the rhythm of daily life. Indian culture is the starting point of her work. The range of Indian culture expressed through film, theatre, music, and performance are all sources of artistic inspiration for her. Even though from far away from home, she continue to explore the boundaries between Eastern and Western cultural influences. Her paintings have been exhibited in New York, Providence, Philadelphia, New Jersey, Ohio, Virginia, Chicago, Dubai, Panama, Portugal, and Mexico. From 2003 to 2006, she displayed her paintings at the American Embassy in Panama's ambassador house, and in 2005, she was asked to lead workshops in schools and art centers, creating collaborative art installations based on everyday objects in her personal life. Collin Powell and Laura Bush invited her to honor American artists at the Art in Embassies in 2005, alongside other artists and gallerists. She worked on the public project America’s Chinatown Voices at Columbus Park in New York City, organized by the Asian American Art Center in 2008 and 2009. Three hundred panels illustrating stories of Asian Americans in New York were publicly displayed in Chinatown New York City. The Philadelphia Museum of Art proudly exhibited two of her paintings from 2002 to 2008. She has done residency with Snug Harbor Cultural Center, Chashama Visual Arts, and Triangle Arts.