Shagha Ariannia

Artist’s Statement

Through my multi-disciplinary practice, I regard political and cultural identity as a site in which to play and struggle. My strategy originates in the feminist maxim, “the personal is political” and its translation through modes of address that include video installations, Drawing, painting, as mechanisms for social critique. My practice negotiates the physical and cultural gaps between my native Iran and my current home in the Americas, where I have lived in since a week after 9/11; a distance of space and time that I measure with small, nuanced gestures. Drawing upon my personal experiences and the paradox of existing between political realities, I explore questions of citizenship, national belonging, the fantasy of immigration and global power relationships as they assert themselves within the framework of the intimate domestic sphere.

I am fascinated by the fact that contemporary life means that we all have a relationship to war or the threat of war, no matter how far from us it may be. As a result of our experiences and the representations of the media, contemporary life is often made paranoid, creating the sense of a split subjecthood that the spectacle of war produces. The focus of my practice is to investigate this contemporary Post-Colonialism as a political space in which to question hegemonic personal narratives.

Website: www.shaghaariannia.com

Biography

Select Solo Exhibitions from 2011-2016

2017
Who Sings the Nation-State?, Vincent Price Art Museum, Los Angeles

2015
MIXTAPE: Goodbye street, Goodbye home, UAG, Irvine, California

2013
Two Americas Away, 18th Street Arts Center, Los Angeles

2012
PTL (Part Time Lover), Commonwealth & Council, Los Angeles

Select Group Exhibitions from 2011-2016

2016
The Whales Took You, PØST, Los Angeles

2014
WATCHMEN: SURVEILLANCE AND THE FLANEUR, Torrance Art Museum, Los Angeles

2014
Project Flower, Act I, Shulamit Gallery, Los Angeles

2012
Artist As Travelers, HBK University Gallery, Braunschweig, Germany

Select Fellowships and Awards

2014
YoYoYo, Rema Hort Mann Foundation, los Angeles

2010
Bartman Fund, California Institute of the Arts

2008
Torrance Museum Juried Exhibition, first place, Los Angeles
Select Community-based Artwork

2016
Empty Reservoir ,Silver Lake Reservoir, Los Angeles, Calif.

2014
Varieties of Requisition and the Interpreters’ Guild, Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership at
Kalamazoo College, Michigan

2012
ReVISIONS of LA Workshop, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), Calif

2011
Community Arts Partnership (CAP), Los Angeles, Calif

Education

M.F.A., 2012
California Institute of the Arts, Calif.

B.A., 2007
University of California, Irvine, Calif.