Rosha Yaghmai: The Well

Detail of a painted seafloor from the 1975 Toei animated film The Little Mermaid: small shells scattered across sand washed in soft bands of green, yellow, and violet, each casting a long shadow.

STILL FROM "THE LITTLE MERMAID" BY TOMOHARU KATSUMATA, 1975.

Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND) is pleased to present a site-specific installation by Los Angeles-based artist Rosha Yaghmai at Ruth Foundation for the Arts from December 11, 2026 through June 21, 2027.

The Well is an invitation to journey inward, a collapsing of the external and internal landscape into an unknown space, to be experienced without being consciously known. Rosha Yaghmai transforms the space into an immersive environment comprising a large central sculpture and projection, a series of abstracted landscapes, and an intimate reading room of transcendental texts, developed in partnership with the Philosophical Research Society (Los Angeles). Drawing from the lineage of artist-built environments, Midwest grottoes, and her family’s property in Altadena, California, Yaghmai’s project offers a context for contemplative passage, personal edification, and inner exploration.

Yaghmai's practice is deeply rooted in Southern California's sculptural lineage, as well as her own personal diasporic experience. Materially adept, she works across media — from silicone, cast minerals and metals, glass, resin, organza, and more — to realize narrative impulses and alchemical strategies, manifesting a body of work that spans dreams, real and imagined places, natural and psychological phenomena. Considering what is inherited and accumulated, and our relationship with time and place, Yaghmai mines personal and cultural archival forms to give shape to objects that are simultaneously familiar and foreign, an effect achieved through transformative processes, extreme changes in scale, optical illusions, and uncanny installation strategies.

Rosha Yaghmai

Rosha Yaghmai (b. 1978 Santa Monica, California) lives and works in Los Angeles. She received an MFA from California Institute of the Arts in 2007 and her BFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York in 2001. Solo and two person exhibitions include: The Wattis Institute, San Francisco, CA; Cleopatra’s, Brooklyn, NY; Kayne Griffin Corcoran, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara, CA; Commonwealth & Council, Los Angeles, CA; and Chapter NY, NY. Selected group shows include: Life Threads, SFMOMA, San Francisco; Long Story Short, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Overflow, Afterglow: New Work in Chromatic Figuration, Jewish Museum, New York; Made in LA, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; The Domestic Plane, The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CT; Mad World, Marciano Collection, Los Angeles, CA; Virginia Woolf: An exhibition inspired by her writings, Tate St. Ives, Cornwall, UK; THE STAND IN (OR A GLASS OF MILK), Public Fiction Los Angeles, CA; HOT ROCK, Transmission Gallery, Glasgow, Scotland.

Yaghmai’s work is in the collections of Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Mohn Art Collective: Hammer, LACMA, MOCA (MAC3); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND)

Founded in 2009, Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND) is a nonprofit arts organization committed to connecting people and places through site-responsive public art and programs. Over the last fifteen years, LAND has supported projects ranging from large-scale sculptural commissions, to cross-country billboard projects, roadside screenings, artist-run workshops, a city-wide presentation of multi-channel videos, and more. LAND has presented over 500 artists across over 300 discrete programs and exhibitions in its history, reaching millions of people.

Opening Reception for Rosha Yaghmai: The Well