Azita Mireshghi
She/Her
Santa Monica, CA, US
Azita Mireshghi is an American-born Iranian metalsmith, studio artist, and curator based out of Santa Monica, California. She comes from 3 generations of blacksmiths. She obtained her Master of Fine Arts degree in Jewelry and Metal Arts in 2016.
“Expanding on ‘Liberation Constellation’, this series of four necklaces reflects the diversity of our world and the many forms oppression takes. Each necklace carries its own unique constellation: distinct, like the revolutions currently unfolding across the world, yet all part of the same sky. These constellations are a map, not just of shared suffering, but of shared resistance. At the end of the day, we are all fighting for the same thing: Woman. Life. Freedom.”
www.azitamireshghi.com
How does your creative practice reflect your experience of living and making as a BIPOC and/or 2SLGBTQIA+ maker?
“As an Iranian-American woman, cultural displacement and political history aren’t biographical context but the material I work from. I make from inherited memory and what is currently unfolding: between cultures, between silences, between what is named and what is not allowed to be. My creative practice does not come from ideas alone, but from what has settled into my nervous system.
The body is not a neutral vessel. It holds grief, memory, resistance, longing, things I didn’t choose to carry but inherited anyway. Woman. Life. Freedom. is not a slogan I borrowed. It is a cry I recognize in my own body.”
"Liberation Constellation Necklaces", Brass, recycled bullet casings, human hair, CZ, 22" x 15", 2026What techniques, stories, or materials have been passed down to you, and how are you reimagining them in the present?
“I come from many generations of blacksmiths. While I didn’t receive formal training from my ancestors, I was drawn to metalsmithing before I even knew about my lineage, as though the knowledge arrived through the blood rather than through instruction.
My ancestors made tools and household objects: functional and necessary. What I make serves something different. My objects are worn on the body, they carry political memory, they ask to be seen. Instead of making what a household needs to function, I make what a person needs to resist, remember, and assert their existence.”
Photographs Courtesy of the Artist
“I honor my ancestors and all those who endured suppression and violence in the name of power. They are why my objects have to mean something. The pathway I hope to forge is for any artist who has not yet trusted that their craft can hold something urgent. We live inside a constant flood of bad news and art reaches differently: it moves through the body before it reaches the mind.”