Delbar Shahbaz at the ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California, 2019. Photo courtesy of the artist. 

In early January 2025, the devastating Eaton Canyon wildfire swept through Altadena, California, USA, destroying Delbar Shahbaz’s home, studio, and archive, a rupture she describes as losing a part of herself. The fire profoundly shifted her creative practice, infusing her work with renewed themes of resilience, transformation, and healing. As she returned to the charred mountain daily, she collected memories and natural fragments — water, light, movement — that found their way into a new body of work exploring both fragility and renewal.

Born in Iran and now based in Los Angeles, Shahbaz holds an MFA from Tehran’s Art University and the ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California, where she also teaches. Professionally engaged in art since her early teens, she has exhibited widely, including the solo show “Land Is Feeling, Color Is Remedy” at Advocartsy (2023). In February 2025, you could see her contributions in “Out of the Ashes: Artists Impacted by the Los Angeles Wildfires” at Bergamot Station. Her profound commitment to cultural and gender identity work continues to evolve with each exhibition.

Delbar Shahbaz stands amid the ruins of her home and studio in Altadena, Los Angeles, after the January 2025 wildfire.

Shahbaz’s work unfolds like a sensory poem: glazed surfaces mimic the reflective quality of water, sculptural fragments evoke the texture of scorched earth, and ethereal light guides the eye through emotional terrain. Her hybrid sculptures and dreamlike figures weave personal memory with mythopoetic resonance — a visual lexicon shaped by displacement, environment, and spiritual inquiry. Constantly adapting to cultural landscapes and literal landscapes aflame, her practice remains rooted in material metamorphosis and poetic transformation.

In an interview with Global Voices, Shahbaz discussed the role of natural elements — water, light, and movement — as metaphors for healing, the tension between personal narrative and universal resonance, and the porous boundaries between body, memory, and home.

Excerpts from the interview follow.

Omid Memarian (OM): You lost your home and much of your artistic archive in a recent Los Angeles wildfire. How has this shaped your creative process and themes? Have you begun to find artistic restoration or a new normal?

Delbar Shahbaz (DS): Losing my home, studio, and archive in the Eaton fire on January 7, 2025, felt like losing a part of myself. Altadena had been my sanctuary, where I felt rooted. In the aftermath, I returned daily to the ruins, offering flowers and prayers. Eaton Mountain became a site of mourning. Seeking healing, I turned to nature and the presence of other artists. At Headlands Center for the Arts, I slowly reconnected with my practice. My recent work explores resilience, wind as both destroyer and healer, and water as a remedy. As an immigrant and fire survivor, I reflect more deeply on the fragility of home, shifting identity, and the need to care for the environments we depend on.

Delbar Shahbaz, ‘After the Fire,’ 2025. Ceramic glaze and resin, 10 × 12 × 21 cm (3.9 × 4.7 × 8.3 in).
Created in the wake of the January 2025 wildfire that destroyed her home and studio in Altadena, this sculptural work channels personal loss into tactile resilience. Photo courtesy of the artist.

OM: How has the meaning of home shifted for you through immigration and the loss of your home? Could you share how this relates to your painting, “My Body, My Land?”

DS: After immigrating from Iran, I lost my sense of home and felt unrooted, until I found quiet belonging in Altadena, a place near Eaton Mountain. We were artists from different parts of the world living in one artist complex. I lost my community.

But even that felt fragile, more like something my body remembered than truly believed. I’ve realized home isn’t fixed—it’s a feeling that arises when I’m centered in my body. I understood this more deeply after losing my physical home in the Eaton fire. “My Body, My Land” emerged during deep displacement, helping me reclaim space within. Water became a remedy; its reflective, cleansing presence entered my work. Now, I explore home as a shifting relationship between body,  memory, and land, held together through texture, form, and material. 

Delbar Shahbaz, ‘The Land is Feeling,’ 2023. Acrylic and oil painting on canvas, 182.9 × 91.4 cm (72 × 36 in). Photo courtesy of the artist.

OM: Healing and meaning are central to works like “Unity,” “The Land is Feeling,” and “Seeking the Light.” How does art help you navigate grief, transformation, and spiritual renewal?

DS: Art is my vessel for transformation, an act of shedding layers shaped by social and cultural definitions to find my most authentic self. Change is painful, but renewal lies beyond it. Movement and creation help me navigate this shift. I stay connected to place through memory, sensation, and natural elements. Water binds memory; land holds emotion, and color offers balance and healing. In “Unity,” “The Land is Feeling,” and “Seeking the Light,” movement, light, and color guide me through grief, resilience, and spiritual regeneration. By surrendering to the process, I find restoration and a renewed sense of belonging.

Delbar Shahbaz, ‘What She Couldn’t Say’ (2011). Acrylic and oil paint on canvas, 78 × 119 cm (31 × 47 inches). Photo courtesy of the artist.

OM: With MFAs from Tehran’s Art University and ArtCenter College of Design, where you now teach, how has academic training and teaching shaped your personal expression and creative evolution?

DS: Art connects people, and teaching lets me share that. Guiding students to use their hands and imagination to make sense of the world is a privilege. The greatest reward is hearing from former students who still create; it reaffirms that art is essential to navigating modern life.

Academic training provided me with the tools to analyze, engage, and collaborate effectively. I love the intellectual exchange and time spent reflecting and expanding ideas. While I immerse myself in my imaginative world in my practice, teaching fuels my passion, deepens my connection to others, and reminds me of the compassion we need as human beings.

Delbar Shahbaz, ‘A Flower Against the Gale,’ 2025. Acrylic, oil paint, and collage on canvas, 33 × 38 cm (13 × 15 in). Photo courtesy of the artist.

OM: In works like “Travellers,” you blur the autobiographical and allegorical. How do you see your practice as a visual memoir, and how do you balance personal narrative with universal themes?

DS: I navigate the tension between personal narrative and universal resonance by embracing fluidity: letting lived experience unfold beyond the self. Movement, nature, and transformation ground the work in something both intimate and expansive. I lean into ambiguity, letting light, gesture, and material speak where words fall short. Rather than illustrating autobiography, I surrender personal history to form, inviting others to find their own reflections. I collect objects — vintage accessories, leaves, and sticks — that offer fleeting feelings of belonging. These fragments become part of my sculptures, vessels of memory and adaptation, creating beings that hold personal and collective meaning.

Delbar Shahbaz, ‘Travelers #1,’ 2021. Acrylic on canvas, 50.8 × 38.1 cm (20 × 15 in). Photo courtesy of the artist.

OM: Light, water, and movement are central in your work, evoking fluidity and connection. Why do these elements resonate as metaphors, and how do they function in your process, materially and symbolically?

DS: Light, water, and movement are central to my work because they reflect the emotional and physical states I navigate. Light often emerges from darkness, symbolizing clarity after uncertainty. Water became vital after I lost my home; it offered healing, reflection, and a sense of continuity. I began using glossy resin to echo its mirror-like surface. Movement, through travel or gesture, connects me to the land and my body, allowing for transformation. These elements are not just symbolic; they shape my materials and textures, helping me translate personal experience into something open, where others can see their own stories through nature’s language.

Delbar Shahbaz, ‘No-where is behind us, #4,’ 2021. Acrylic on paper, 41.9 × 52.1 cm (16 1/2 × 20 1/2 in). Photo courtesy of the artist.

OM: Your work features hybrid creatures, dreamlike animals, and mythic women, forming a cosmology that feels both intimate and archetypal. What draws you to the mythopoetic, and how do these figures express identity and resistance?

DS: My turn toward the mythopoetic comes from a need to express identity beyond fixed definitions. As an immigrant woman, I find freedom in creating hybrid beings: dreamlike animals, mythic female figures, and fantastical creatures that resist categorization. These forms embody beauty and brutality, vulnerability and power. Drawing from ancient totems, outsider writings, and memory, I build a cosmology where the body is both sacred and strange. Their textured, glamorized surfaces invite touch and intimacy, while their ambiguity challenges narratives of gender, belonging, and transformation. I explore identity as fluid, layered, and resilient, mirroring cultural dissonance and quiet self-reinvention.

Delbar Shahbaz, ‘Chanting the light #1,’ 2022. Acrylic and oil painting on canvas, 152.4 × 91.4 cm (60 × 36 in). Photo courtesy of the artist.

OM: As a multidisciplinary artist, how do you choose the medium for an idea? Is it an intuitive decision, or does the material guide the concept’s evolution?

DS: My relationship with materials has always been intuitive. Since childhood, I’ve been drawn to transforming what’s around me. I remember being seven, cutting hollow persicaria stems by the river to build small dams and channels. That instinct to shape and reimagine continues today. I don’t begin with a fixed medium; the concept and material often emerge together. Sometimes the texture or weight of a material guides the work; other times, an idea’s emotional tone calls for video, sculpture, or painting. I keep the process open, letting materials speak and the concept unfold through touch, memory, and experimentation.