Artist Rosha Yaghmai sculpts new perspectives - literally

The idea of perspective fascinates sculptor Rosha Yaghmai. Her 2019 installation “MiracleGrow” offered the perspective of a spider in a bathroom. By enlarging the proportions of objects that to us seem like trash on a restroom floor, but in reality can reflect the very composition of ourselves.

In 2020, her piece “Window, Book of Kings 1” was featured in a sculpture exhibition at the Kayne Griffin gallery focusing on the intersection between sculpture and other art forms.

Rosha Yaghmai puts distance in art

“I was really interested in taking photographs,” says Yahgmai. “Really quickly, when I went to photo school, I spent most of my time trying to use the chemicals to do things you aren’t supposed to do. So I was never making straight photographs.” She proceeded to move into the field of sculpture, making dioramas and large-scale works.

“I always seem to be making doorways, pass-throughs, windows, screens,” she notes. “I think most of my work is some kind of screen.” In her 2017 exhibition “The Courtyard” and 2015 exhibition “Gates”, Yaghmai creates screens, through which you can look in the same way as her piece “Window, Book of Kings I.”

Window, Book of Kings 1 by Rosha Yaghmai

Window, Book of Kings 1, photo from Kayne Griffin Gallery

Made in L.A. 2018, Hammer Museum for Contemporary Art Review

Rosha Yaghmai comes from an artistic Iranian-American background

Yaghmai mentions that her father also held an interest in photography. In fact, she inherited his cameras as well as his passion. Her brother, guitarist Amir Yaghmai, also found success in the arts. He plays for the experimental rock band The Voidz, alongside a number of other projects.

In fact, Amir collaborated with his sister on “MiracleGrow”. Rosha built the setting – a tile floor with a copper tube in the wall and a magnified hair on the floor – and Amir provided the soundtrack. “The Three’s Company jingle, and put it together with this Iranian song about a river,” Rosha explains.

Yaghmai’s family entered the United States from Iran (for the second time) shortly before her birth. A lot of her work involves the exploration of her identity as an Iranian-American, which she never really had as a child.

“I think my dad was so involved with being an American person that we never really talked about [being Iranian Americans],” says Yaghmai. “…I am realizing…how in much of my work there is a subconscious draw to that.”

Rosha Yaghmai: MiracleGrow exhibition

“Miracle-Gro® is a chemical (a fertilizer) that you put on a living thing to change its properties,” explains Yaghmai. “In the back of my mind I’m always thinking of psychedelics.”