i am all the women that came before me.
︎Lela Shahrzad (b. 1984 ︎ she/they)
is a multidisciplinary artist using sculpture, installation, and time-based media as a means of exploring the (im)permance and tension of dueling identities.
The materials in their projects vary depending on the language of the concept they support. Their (in)tangibility of work around gesture, time and object deconstructs, as well as accepts, the oppositional thoughts we learn to define ourselves by.
Lela has exhibited at INVERSE’s Performance Art Festival, Crystal Bridges’ satellite museum, The Momentary (Bentonville), Glassbox Gallery (Santa Barbara), Mesa Gallery (San Diego), Atkinson Gallery (Santa Barbara), and various public works in San Luis Obispo. They have participated in multiple residencies including The Industry of the Ordinary’s performance art residency and the INVERSE Performance Art residency. They have collaborated with artists in Panama, New York, Beijing and Switzerland and have been mentioned in Art & America, Art and Education and VoyageLA. In 2021 she studied with the virtual first, experimental art school, Dark Study. She graduated in 2018 with a BFA in Art & Design from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo with the Life Achievement Award. She is currently a MFA Candidate at the University of California, Santa Barabara, with the Regent’s Fellowship.
PHOTO BY HÁI TRIĚU