Atia Shafee

Born in Oklahoma City in 1984, Atia Shafee lives and works in Los Angeles. She pursued her Design diploma in Tehran and was trained by Tendai Johnson at Montgomery College in Rockville, MD who had a large impact on her observational skills. In 2014, Judith Stone and Zdeno Mayercak were influential on her development of her own sculptural voice. Atia obtained her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Otis College of Art and Design. Her work explores concepts of culture, childhood trauma and sexual abuse, separation and belonging in an abstract form. Her sculptural process is an interaction of paper, fabric, fiberglass layered with symbolic words in Farsi and English. The final forms are abstract, adorned with material both hidden and exposed through the process of multiple layering and labor-intensive hours of scraping and sanding. Atia is a multi-disciplinary artist, concurrently working on a series of photographic portraits, featuring her own vision of the subjects, their personalities, and the interplay of light, shadow, color, and charisma. Atia has exhibited in art institutions including Montgomery College, Ben Maltz Gallery and galleries in Tehran. While actively working as a full-time artist, she is also completing a memoir.