With 25+ years of expertise as trans-disciplinary performer, poet, educator, filmmaker, and social engagement artist, RobertFaridKarimi brings nourishment, playfulness, and interactive storytelling to spaces worldwide – from General Mills to Off Broadway to Nuyorican Poets Café to HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, Hawaii International Film Festival, The Smithsonian, and South by Southwest. With his Iranian-Guatemalan heritage as a point of departure, Karimi plays a diverse group of characters in his solo and collaborative shows, from the mystical Disco Jesus to pop star Freddie Mercury to the idealist cook Mero Cocinero, who has cooked for luminaries MF Doom, Yuri Kochiyama and families and change makers worldwide.

Karimi made healthy messaging delicious with the Diabetes of Democracy: a culinary engagement project which inspires audiences to exchange their cultural culinary histories, connect with one another over humor& food, and discover their own power towards personal balance. DoD served over 80000 people from 2009-2022.

A Creative Capital artist, Pushcart Prize-nominated writer, RobertFaridKarimi featured their work on NPR, TheSmithsonian, SouthXSouthWest, HBO’s DefPoetryJam, Los Angeles Times, Callaloo, Mizna, Total Chaos: an anthology of Hip Hop theory, Asian American Literary Review, and A Good Time for The Truth: Race In Minnesota and various platforms/spaces worldwide. 

Karimi now designs games and interactive performance experiences to spark audiences/players, in all manner of civic spaces, to imagine worlds of mutual community nourishment. He is an Assistant Professor of Performance Practices and Co-director of the Public Practice + Generative Play StudioLab at Arizona State University.
RobertFaridKarimi.com