Shelly Badal is an artist, cultural producer, and experiential designer who works within a sensory practice to cultivate sites for relatedness and presence via performance, sound, light, video, language, and community organizing. Her work bridges phases of transmutation observed in the natural and mystical, and relational aesthetics to examine 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 written works and Pastport Workshop offer extended metaphor and personification as a means for navigating the self and reframing constraints.
Explorations are primed by degrees in psychology and film, working in public radio (KCRW), scripted development (Sony Pictures Television), film production, and co-running an interdisciplinary art space from 2018 - 2021 (Vocal Warehouse). 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.
Badal’s work has been exhibited at Human Resources (LA), Navel (LA), Coaxial (LA), MOCA (LA), OPaf (Long Beach), and Flowerhead Gallery (LA). Her films have been screened and awarded in Los Angeles, Moscow, San Francisco, and Seattle.