Shelly Badal is an artist and cultural producer working within a sensory practice to cultivate sites for relatedness and presence via performance, sound, light, video, language, and community organizing.
She is interested in will, change, belonging, and their plasticity under various conditions.
Ongoing research in prosocial behavior, implicit bias, and nonlinear expressions of time serves as the basis for her responding to theory in an experiential format. Her A/V works blend abstraction with verité footage and field recordings using analog and digital processes, often incorporating reflective materials and projection.
Her traveling auditory activation Metaphoria, and Pastport Workshop offer extended metaphor and narrative therapy methods as a means for navigating the self and reframing constraints.
Grounded in psychology and film studies, working in public radio (KCRW), scripted development (Sony Pictures Television), film production, and co-running an interdisciplinary art space from 2018 to 2021 (Vocal Warehouse). She recently founded Machrozet, a multidisciplinary studio developing live experiences and facilitating creative practices among artists and musicians across art and nightlife communities.
Badal’s work has been exhibited at Human Resources (LA), Navel (LA), Coaxial (LA), MOCA (LA), the Wolford House (LA), OPaf (Long Beach), and Flowerhead Gallery (LA). Her films have been screened in Los Angeles, Moscow, San Francisco, and Seattle.
Her interest in presence as a base layer for the enduring qualities of connection is a continuation of an inherited tradition from her roots in the Caucasus Mountains.