The most important work in contemporary art is rarely the work that gets the most attention. Behind every artist who breaks through, there is often a network of people who believed in them early who organized the show, secured the grant, produced the performance, and built the platform that made the breakthrough possible. Roya Amirsoleymani is one of those people.
She is an independent curator, creative producer, writer, researcher, and arts advocate based on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula. Over more than a decade, she has built a career around a specific and consistent commitment: making space for artists and communities who are frequently excluded from the institutions that claim to represent contemporary culture.
Her work is not peripheral to the art world. It is the kind of work the art world depends on, even when it does not always say so.
Quick Summary
| Category | Details |
|---|---|
| Full Name | Roya Amirsoleymani |
| Profession | Independent Curator, Writer, Creative Producer, Consultant |
| Nationality | American |
| Based In | Olympic Peninsula, Washington, USA |
| Fields | Contemporary Art, Performance, Visual Arts |
| Known For | Curating exhibitions, festivals, artist advocacy, arts leadership |
| Former Organization | Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA) |
| Years at PICA | 2012–2023 |
| Education | BA in Contemporary Visual Culture & Gender Studies; MS in Arts Management |
| Current Roles | Independent curator, producer, consultant, researcher, writer |
Education Rooted in Culture and Management
Roya Amirsoleymani’s academic path reflects both the intellectual and practical dimensions of her career. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Contemporary Visual Culture and Gender Studies from the Johnston Center for Integrative Studies in California, an interdisciplinary program that trains students to think critically about how culture is produced, who it represents, and who controls access to it.
She followed that with a Master of Science in Arts Management from the University of Oregon, a degree that equipped her with the organizational and administrative tools to actually build and run arts programs rather than simply theorize about them.
The combination matters. She entered the professional world with both a critical framework for understanding what art does in a society and the practical skills to move funding, manage organizations, and produce work at scale.
Over a Decade at Portland Institute for Contemporary Art
From 2012 to 2023, Roya Amirsoleymani held several leadership roles at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art known in arts circles as PICA including Programs Director, Artistic Director, and Curator.
PICA is one of the Pacific Northwest’s most significant contemporary arts organizations, and its flagship event, the Time-Based Art (TBA) Festival, is internationally recognized as a showcase for experimental performance, visual art, dance, theater, and sound. Her work at PICA placed her at the center of that programming for over a decade.
During her tenure, she curated and organized a wide range of projects: visual art exhibitions, experimental theatre, contemporary dance, sound art, artist residencies, publications, and public programs. She also managed grant-making through the Andy Warhol Foundation’s Regional Regranting Network, distributing resources to artists and organizations across the region.
Some of her notable curatorial projects during this period include Remembering to Remember: Experiments in Sound, We Got Each Others’ Back, No Human Involved: The 5th Annual Sex Workers’ Art Show, and THROUGH AND THROUGH AND THROUGH: New Work by Gordon Hall. She also organized a public symposium on HIV/AIDS history in partnership with Visual AIDS, the kind of project that connects contemporary art practice to urgent historical memory.
Eleven years is a long time in any institution, and the consistency of her presence at PICA reflects both her commitment to the organization and the trust it placed in her vision.
Building an Independent Practice
In 2023, Roya Amirsoleymani left PICA and established her own independent practice, a transition that many arts professionals make but that requires real courage when the institution you are leaving has been the center of your professional life for over a decade.
Her independent work spans curating, creative producing, consulting, writing, and research multiple modes that she moves between depending on the project and the artist. She collaborates with organizations and artists across the United States, bringing to each project the same combination of curatorial intelligence and administrative competence that defined her institutional years.
Current projects include producing interdisciplinary work for artists San Cha, Ahamefule J. Oluo, Holland Andrews, and Yuniya edi kwon a roster that reflects her consistent interest in artists whose work resists easy categorization. These projects have received support from Creative Capital, the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Performance Network, and the MAP Fund.
In 2025, San Cha’s contemporary opera Inebria me, which she produced, received the international Music Theatre Now Award recognition that the work being made within her orbit operates at the highest level of its field.
Oak Head Artist Residency: Space for Artists of Color
In 2024, Roya Amirsoleymani and her partners launched Oak Head Artist Residency on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, an independent residency specifically designed to support artists, writers, and musicians of color.
The residency offers creative space, housing, meals, and stipends, operating through community fundraising rather than conventional nonprofit infrastructure. That structural choice is deliberate. It keeps the residency nimble, community-rooted, and free from the bureaucratic constraints that can compromise the mission of institutionalized arts programs.
Oak Head is a direct expression of the values that have run through her entire career: that artists from underrepresented communities deserve dedicated support, and that creating that support requires building new structures rather than simply waiting for existing institutions to do better.
Writing as a Practice, Not a Supplement
Alongside her curatorial and producing work, writing is a genuine part of how Roya Amirsoleymani thinks and creates. Her output includes curatorial essays, art criticism, personal essays, and research publications but also more experimental forms: hybrid journals, long-form creative writing, and work that sits outside conventional genre categories.
In 2024, she self-published Dead Best Friends, a chapbook that engages with death, grief, and friendship in a form that is literary rather than curatorial. The project reflects an artist who does not experience writing as documentation of her other work, but as its own mode of inquiry.
She was named a 2024 Artist Trust Grants for Artist Projects (GAP) recipient recognition that situates her as an artist in her own right, not only as a facilitator of others’ work.
Consulting for the Field
Since 2024, Roya Amirsoleymani has worked with the National Performance Network, conducting program evaluations, participatory research, and studies on artist mobility, as well as strategic planning for nonprofit arts organizations. She also consults on grant writing, arts administration, program development, and community engagement.
This consulting practice extends the impact of her curatorial and producing work into the organizational infrastructure of the field helping arts organizations build more equitable and effective programs, not just more visible ones.
Conclusion
Roya Amirsoleymani’s career is built on a set of commitments that have remained consistent across roles, organizations, and projects: to artists who are underrepresented, to work that is formally adventurous, and to the organizational structures that make it possible for that work to exist.
She is a curator who produces, a producer who writes, a writer who advocates, and an advocate who builds residencies from the ground up. The work is interconnected in the way that the most serious creative careers tend to be each thread reinforcing the others, each project carrying the values of everything that came before it.
In a field that frequently celebrates the work while overlooking the people who make it possible, her name deserves to be known.
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