Don’t be offended if you don’t understand the title of Lela Shahrzad Welch‘s new exhibition, ghosts-above_ghosts-below.dxf. If you’re not versed in the way of CNC (computer numerical control) technology, you wouldn’t know a .dxf from a .tiff from an .avif.
“It’s kind of an annoying title,” the artist admitted during a recent interview in Left Field Gallery, where the work hangs through April 20. “It’s the file type for how all the works are made. Everything is used with computer numerical control, and the .dxf is what you upload to the native software to have the machine cut it.”
Instead of cutting by hand, a CNC machine allows artists to feed their designs into it and cut material like steel per their specifications. The technology allowed Welch, a Cal Poly sculpture lecturer in the Art and Design Department, to bring her new show from conception to reality in just four months.
The work itself is based on elements from The Shahnameh (The Book of Kings), an epic poem by Persian poet Ferdowsi that presents the history of the Persian Empire and encapsulates the ethno-national cultural identity of Iran.
“It’s one long poem, and for a specific generation of Iranians, it became this formative book of tales,” Welch explained. “There’s a lot of pride in [the poem]. I originally wrote this short story that I did for my grad thesis and did this giant 15-foot rug based on a character that I had pulled from it, but I kind of used that as a point of departure.
“So, it’s a little bit fan fiction on my part. I completely ran with it.”
Welch’s various pieces depict ideas inspired by Persian culture—a thinly veiled threat seems to depict a woman slaying a deer, but as Welch notes, “is she killing the deer or herself?”
The good news is you don’t need to know Ferdowsi’s poem or have a deep knowledge of Persian culture to enjoy this show. Sure, that insider knowledge might yield a deeper experience, “but in order for art to be this feedback between the viewer and the object, it needs to have this multivalent way of approaching it,” Welch explained.
Everybody brings their own baggage to an art show, and having art explained seems like a drag.
“It should be a little bit open-ended because, once it’s explained, it’s kind of boring,” Welch said with a laugh. “I can, but then where are you? Where do you get to sit with it? There’s definitely purpose behind the decisions that I’m making. I think that’s important. I have a north star concept, but at the same time, I don’t want it to be so rigid that you can’t move within it.”
Part of Welch’s fascination with her culture comes from straddling it. She’s both within and outside of it. She was born here, but she has deep Iranian family ties—she’s not quite Persian or American.
“I’m pulling from elements that I’m familiar with, that I grew up with, but I’m very aware of the fact that I’m not quite fully engaged with it. It’s like I’m chasing it.”
Like many Iranian families in the U.S., Welch’s family was part of the diaspora of the 1979 Cultural Revolution that saw the Shah of Iran deposed and the Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic State take power.
“My grandfather worked for the American embassy at the time Khomeini took over, and they had to flee the country. My mom was already here at the time, so she came a year earlier,” she said.
As Welch researched Iran, she realized her family were Shah sympathizers, and she grew up thinking the Shah “could do no wrong.”
It’s true that under the Shah’s rule, women had rights and education, and Western music, film, and dress were acceptable. But Iran has a deeply complicated history, which Welch realized the more she researched.
“It’s not that binary, but Khomeini went rogue. When I talk to friends from Iran, they’re like, ‘Oh, all the stuff that you’re interested in is of a very specific era.’ I have this very myopic understanding,” she said.
It’s like Welch is looking at a time capsule, and this show is in some ways how Welch sees her culture through her mother’s eyes. Welch mentioned Los Angeles-based Iranian multidisciplinary artist Roksana Pirouzmand.
“She uses her personal family archive to inform her work, and she has said, ‘My job is to tell my family’s story without giving away their secrets.’ I love that so much, so when I think about my mom and everything she’s done for me, I feel like my drive has a lot to do with her in mind,” Welch said.
It’s as if she’s haunted by the ghosts of a past she didn’t experience firsthand, and by using CNC technology, she’s further distancing herself from the artistic process of creation.
“There are two parallels that are happening, this parallel of story to technology, but also this artist’s hand that you’re losing, so the loss of control and the loss of the artist’s hand is built into the structure of production,” she explained. “For example, it starts with hand drawings, and then that goes into Illustrator, then into the native software, and then that’s cut.
“There are plenty of times when I’m working with these [technologies], and thankfully I have working with me these professionals, especially with the waterjet, where we’d have conversations about how the machine can’t handle the thing I’m asking it to do.”
Yes, Welch’s demands on the CNC crashed the machine. She’s become the ghost in the machine.
“It’s always coming back to this idea of story, where world histories get transferred down through families. I’m thinking about my mother moving here from Iran. There’s this myth of my uncle having this monkey when he lived in Iran, but no one believes him,” she said.
“As these stories traverse geographies, generations, and time, they completely morph. They become something completely different, so I’m thinking about that information loss as it moves through these technological systems.” Δ
Contact Arts Editor Glen Starkey at gstarkey@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Mar 27 – Apr 6, 2025.
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