Shima Taj Bakhsh works across installation, video, and digital fabrication. Her practice is motivated by catastrophe in its many forms: invisibility, erasure, and total death, irreversible moments that alter the fragile fabric of reality. Informed by her upbringing in
Iran her work addresses how mortality is never static but continually reshaped by collective consciousness and shifting political agendas. In response to these continuous cycles, she examines how society attempts to negotiate the impossible: striving to reverse the process of dying, generate narrative out of absence, and return those reconstructed figures back to loss.

Following a year-long residency at the Umbrella Arts Center, Shima is currently an Artist-in-Residence at the Boston Center for the Arts (2025–2028). In 2025, she was selected as an Artists for Humanity Fellow and awarded a Mass Cultural Council Grant for Creative Individuals. Her work has been exhibited at venues including the Peabody Essex Museum, Human Resources Los Angeles, the Torrance Art Museum, the Carolyn Campagna  Kleefeld Contemporary Art Museum, and the Second Contemporary Art Biennale at the Niavaran Cultural Center.