“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.
As a sober Iranian American artist, she weaves the unease of ambiguity into their performances and sculptures, drawing inspiration from traditional Persian imagery and storytelling to create work that considers the role and effects of translation and emerging technology. She creates steel and metal armored tapestries using the arabesque as an allegorical framework for storytelling inspried by family histories and Ferdowsi's Book of Kings. Welch utilizes CNC technology in her metal works to explore the limitations of indirect translation. Simply, their practice considers how language, translation, and technology have affected art and the oral histories of the Persian diaspora while considering the cultural contentions of home and placemaking.
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 an upcoming solo show at the San Luis Obispo Museum of Art in the winter of 2026. 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, Peter’s Valley School of Craft, and INVERSE's Performance Art Festival.
In 2021, she studied with the virtual first experimental art school, Dark Study. 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.