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@isabellaazia
My mind in physical form

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Gallery held on May 30th with my incredible friends, love you all forever🪶 by @isaziaa

ISABELLA ZIA SPAGNUOLO
@isaziaa
📍 Atlanta, GA
Fibers MFA 2026
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I am a textile artist whose practice is rooted in the intersection of personal identity, cultural heritage, and storytelling. Drawing from my background, my work explores themes of politics, tradition, and lived experience, both my own and those of the people around me.
Working across textiles and mixed media, I create pieces that invite viewers to engage in deeper reflection on the shared human experience. Each work serves as an open invitation to pause, consider, and engage with the layered complexities of individual and collective narratives.
My creative process is an ongoing cycle as I continue to live and experience new beginnings and ends.

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Photography: @evinholley
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#scad #scadfibers #scaddotedu #scadclassof2026 #fiberartist #fiber #textiles #textile #textiledesign #textiledesigner #artist #fiberartist by @isaziaa

Feather head pieces for @amelllia234. So blessed to be a collaborator on this beautiful collection 🪶 by @isaziaa

I Met Myself Here

This woven and hand built room divider explores the history of the spiral as a symbol of transformation, growth, and the continuous search for self. As a room divider, the piece exists between spaces, functioning as both a boundary and a passageway, reflecting the emotional transitions we move through while trying to understand who we are becoming.

The piece underwent multiple revisions and periods of struggle, constantly changing form before reaching its final state. Rather than resisting this instability, I embraced it as a reflection of the work’s central idea: that growth is an ongoing, imperfect process. Transformation is rarely linear, but instead shaped through trusting your path in this life and the next.

Photos @evinholley by @isaziaa

$Line Between Us This piece explores the tension between permanence and the fleeting nature of human connection. Concrete reflects the human impulse to stabilize and preserve or to fix moments, relationships, and memories into something lasting. Yet even concrete fractures and erodes over time, revealing the limits of our attempts to make permanence out of what is inherently temporary. A feather bound to the leg with red leather introduces a quieter symbol of connection. The red leather references the “red string theory,” the belief that people who are meant to find one another remain invisibly tied together across time and distance. Photos by @evinholley by @isaziaa$

Eight of my eight harness loom woven samples. Most patterns designed by me in weave point.

1. Deflected double cloth
2. Double cloth pleats
3. Summer and Winter
4. Felt resist
5. Diversified plain weave
6. Pique
7. Waffle weave
8. Double cloth pleats by @isaziaa

20 x 50” woven piece with a cotton warp and wool weft. Bleached peacock feather accents with a hand carved wooden rod to hold.

Photos: @evinholley by @isaziaa

What We Carry When We Cannot Carry Them.

This work reflects on the way names and photographs travel across generations, outliving the bodies and voices that first carried them. A name can become a vessel for memory, holding traces of people we may never have met yet remain deeply connected to. Even when the people themselves are gone, their names persist, quietly insisting on continuity and live through many generations to come.

I carefully sawed a family name, “Imani,” in Farsi out of silver. A name that belongs not only to my grandfather, but to the generations before him. During the process of creating this piece in his honor, he suffered a sudden stroke and passed away, an unexpected loss that deeply shook my family. He was a central figure in my life, a source of unity and love; what began as a dedication has transformed into a memorial. An ode to his resilience, to the sacrifices he made in coming to this country, and to the risks he took for love and family. This piece now carries not only his name, but the weight of everything he built and left behind.

‏‎من عاشقتم و دلم برات تنگ شده

Stool constructed from pine and embellished with silver. The woven is made from cotton and wool yarns with a pattern inspired from an old photograph of my family gathered in a living room in Iran.

Photos: @evinholley by @isaziaa

Borrowed Ground

My practice is expanding to consider place as another form of relationship, one that is equally delicate and unresolved. I have always understood “home” as fragile, existing not as a fixed location but as something carried, remembered, and continually redefined. In the context of ongoing war and destruction in Iran, this fragility becomes more immediate. The idea of home is not only emotionally unstable but physically threatened it’s reshaped by violence, loss, and displacement. By turning toward my cultural background, I explore how impermanence operates not only between people but between bodies and land. What remains is a sense of attachment that persists despite absence.

Pulling from history I handcrafted a poplar wooden stool with the lion and Sun motif screenprinted on the top as well as a hole to carry a wilted rose, touching on the lives that are lost in Iran every day. The cushion on top serves as its own independent form of resistance by covering the motif including a honeycomb smocking pattern stitched on top inspired by textiles in Iran.

Photos by @evinholley by @isaziaa

Rat tail cuff for Owen made from 18 gauge sterling silver and acid dyed pink feather

Braid cuff for gwen made from 18 guage sterling silver and indigo dyed feather

🪶 by @isaziaa

Where Wings Meet,

I wanted to experiment more with color and patterns so I created a collection of small feathered clips for my friends. Each color is intentionally chosen for the friend I think it represents. Made with natural and acid dyed turkey quills, duck quills, guinea, and saddle hackle feathers. Then using sublimation dye, patterns were heat pressed and some painted onto the feathers.

🪽🪶🤍 by @isaziaa

“In My Next Life I Want To Be A Bird”

This is the first piece of my senior collection. We, time, and everything around us is mortal, but there is beauty in that impermanence. Us as humans are conditioned for people to leave wether by distance, change, or loss. That knowledge is a driving force. Time is fleeting. It is important to me to bring awareness to this concept, especially after the passing of my friend Joyce. Prior, I lived my life as though myself and everyone around me were infinite. This piece in particular is reflecting on a conversation I had with Joyce about the afterlife. I aim to create a space that reminds people that our connections are ephemeral in hopes that that knowledge allows people to connect with one another in a deeper way because the only permanent thing in life is impermanence.

This piece is created in collaboration with a Furniture major @tea_leaves_please who helped me bring this vision to life by handcrafting the body of this lamp. Using natural feathers and keeping the original form of this black walnut we gave these materials a new life. I created this lampshade with hand dyed ostrich feathers and bleached peacock feathers with a heat pressed photo of Joyce, each singularly stitched onto a handcrafted structure. Dyed wool that was macraméd around the cord, and etched a faded bird to lay at the base of the lamp.

Shot by the wonderful @evinholley by @isaziaa

ایزابلا ضیا

@isaziaa