Shiva Aliabadi

Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA, USA

Artist statement

I often use malleable materials such as rubbers, plastics, and thin copper sheets, to express a sense of constant change and displacement. I create records of specific places and experiences, either in the form of discrete objects (painting/sculpture), rubbings, drawn impressions, or installations. These artworks-as-records are sometimes precarious or non-archival. This intentional fragility points to the fact that, in the end, even our records cease to last, fading in memory like our life stories; it also addresses my concern over whether an immigrant will ever feel at home once displaced. As an Iranian immigrant who came to the US in 1983, soon after the Hostage Crisis, I faced an American culture that told us we did not belong. This lack of inclusion marked itself on me, informing my feeling of groundlessness. I have moved around incessantly in the US over the years, attempting to anchor down a place of true inclusion, yet that anchor has never landed. Instead, I have collected objects and essences of people as I have moved, attempting, through my art, to reign in a steady storyline of my life via still-lifes, relief-structural paintings, installations, and portraits of those I meet. My recent work includes several drawing series on paper. These are usually abstract works, or abstractions from representational images, in mixed media on various substrates. They elicit from my urge to draw out energies and, sometimes, excruciating anxieties, that I live with every day. At...

Artwork