“Somaya Etemad does not make pictures or tell stories; she re-lives and re-imagines them in visible languages born in her dreams... Do not look for Etemad’s history in her art, look for the sensation of living she has come to design via her subconscious.”
— Peter Frank, Art Critic

Somaya Etemad is an Iranian-American visual artist based in Los Angeles. Her multidisciplinary practice spans painting, drawing, sculpture, installation, and architectural thinking, exploring themes of identity, displacement, memory, and the human condition through spatial and symbolic forms.

Etemad received a postgraduate degree in Emerging Systems, Technologies and Media from the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) and earned her Master of Architecture in Iran. Her architectural education continues to inform her artistic practice, bringing a sensitivity to structure, materiality, scale, and spatial relationships that extends beyond the built environment.

Born in Iran and living in the United States since 2011, Etemad's work is shaped by migration, cultural memory, motherhood, and political history. Working across disciplines, she creates works that navigate the space between personal experience and collective consciousness, examining how identity is constructed, fragmented, and transformed over time.

Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including in Japan and throughout the United States. She lives and works in Los Angeles.

EXHIBITING HISTORY

2026

  • Juried National Group Exhibition, Orange County Center for Contemporary Art (OCCCA), Santa Ana, California, USA

  • Juried National Group Exhibition, Long Beach Island Foundation of the Arts & Sciences, Loveladies, New Jersey, USA

  • Juried International Group Exhibition, The Modern Art Museum of Yerevan, Yerevan, Armenia

  • Group Exhibition, Design Festa Gallery, Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan

2025

  • Exhibition, Beverly Hills Art Show, Beverly Hills, CA, USA

  • Group Exhibition, TAG Gallery, Made in the USA: Comics to Counterculture, Los Angeles, CA, USA

  • Solo Painting Exhibition, TAG Gallery, SOLO (a life rebuilt alone), Los Angeles, CA, USA

  • Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, THE 24th JAPAN INTERNATIONAL ART EXCHANGE EXHIBITION, Tokyo, Japan

  • Group Exhibition, TAG Gallery, Shades of Gray, Los Angeles, CA, USA

  • Group Exhibition, TAG Gallery, “Abstract Exhibition”, Los Angeles, CA, USA

2024

  • Group Exhibition, Covet Art Gallery, “Mania”, Oceanside, CA, USA 

  • Group Exhibition, ShockBoxx Gallery, “Not! An Art Fair”, Hermosa Beach, CA, USA   

  • Group Exhibition, TAG Gallery, “2024 Made in the USA”, Los Angeles, CA, USA

  • Group Exhibition, The Bridge Arts Foundation, “Soliloquy”, San Gabriel, CA, USA

  • Group Exhibition, ShockBoxx Gallery, “Mixtape”, Hermosa Beach, CA, USA      

  • Group Exhibition, Women's Caucus for Art (ACCESS), “An Ordinary Notion”, San Francisco, CA, USA     

  • Group Exhibition, Boomer Gallery, "The Dark Side”, London, UK

  • Art Fair Exhibit, Superfine, New York, NY, USA