“I am you, you,
and one who loves,
one who suddenly finds in herself
a dumb grafting to a thousand strange unknowns.
I’m the earth’s ferocious lust
sucking all the waters in
to impregnate the fields”
-Forugh Farrokzhad
Lela Shahrzad Welch is a seeker of a culture rather than a participant and that role has left an indelible mark on their artistic practice, explored through mythopoeia, sculpture, and performance.
Using the arabesque as an allegorical framework for storytelling, short stories inspired by family history and Ferdowsi's 11th-century Shahnameh (Book of Kings), Welch imbues an ongoing series of steel and metal armored tapestries with fabricated histories and futures.
Lela Shahrzad Welch (b. in Tahlequah, Oklahoma) has an exhibition history that includes LEFT FIELD Gallery (Los Osos, CA), The Momentary Museum (Bentonville, AR), Keystone Art Space (Los Angeles), Sweet Lorraine Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), Napa Art Gallery (Camarillo, CA), Mesa Gallery (San Diego, CA), Atkinson Gallery (Santa Barbara, CA), SOA Gallery (Long Beach), and The Art, Design and Architecture Museum (Santa Barbara, CA) with upcoming shows at the San Luis Obispo Museum of Art, High Beams LA and Track 16 Gallery (Los Angeles). Welch attended the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art in the summer of 2025 and has participated in other residencies and workshops such as Industry of the Ordinary's Performance Art Residency, Haystack Mountain School of Craft, and Peter’s Valley School of Craft.
Welch received their MFA at the University of California, Santa Barbara, under the esteemed Chancellor’s Fellowship, graduating with the prestigious Ron Newby Award and as a Mind and Machine Intelligence award winner. Currently, Welch is a lecturer in the Art and Design department at California Polytechnic State University and lives and works in Los Osos, CA.