Artist-in-Residence
Mia Aghili
May - August 2026
“It has been a long year since the Altadena Eaton Fire in January 2025. I moved through the grief of losing a place and channeled that energy into Scars and Endurance, an exhibition I showcased in October that traced the fire and the parallel process of rebuilding both my home and myself. That body of work marked an important moment of release and reflection. It was an accumulation of my work displaying my art as a way to survive the aftermath and give form to what felt unresolved.
Now, I am most excited about entering a new phase that’s on having a dedicated creative space and becoming part of an active community of artists at Blue Roof. As a recent graduate, I am navigating this transitional period with intention, using connection, dialogue, and making to better understand who I am becoming, both personally and as an artist.”
-Mia Aghili, Firefly 2026 AiR
Artist Statement:
I am a painter with an attraction for the texturing and trompe-l'oeil, materials exploration attesting to processes of re-construction and rebirth, both of places and of myself.
The Altadena 2025 Eaton Fire became a catalyzing force that reshaped how I understand architecture, nature, and their histories; how memory is held within place and material shifted my perspective to the fragile space between what has been lost and what continues to exist.
Instead of the devastation itself, I am interested in the emotional and suspended "after;” the hovering state between grief and healing that follows an event of loss. As I move through this in-between space while creating art, my practice is used as a mode of reflection, reconstruction, and self-understanding. It is in that incomplete moment that I begin to rebuild meaning
