CSUF Student Uses Art to Deal with Loss of Family Home in 2025 Altadena Eaton Fire

Through the Burnt Window by Mia Aghili – Courtesy of Mia Aghili

Since January 2025, when the Altadena Eaton Fire demolished her family’s home, Mia Aghili, a fourth-year undergraduate art education student at Cal State Fullerton, has been making art to cope with and reflect on conflicting feelings of loss, displacement, memory and endurance. Halfway through her final semester at CSUF, Aghili’s education and artistic practice have become increasingly intertwined with the familial and personal. This amalgamation of experiences and personal loss stemming from the fire was put on full display and visually represented within Aghili’s moving solo art showcase, Scars and Endurance, which recently closed on November 1, 2025, inside CSUF’s College of the Arts Leo Freedman Gallery.  

Aghili said, “Art making has been my way of processing the confusing and tumultuous feelings I’ve been experiencing since the fire in January…Rather, art making is my release and expression of emotions in a healthy manner. I found that as an artist, it’s not healthy for me to bottle up my feelings. It’s essential that I continue to make art during difficult times because not creating art is even worse.”

The Altadena Eaton Fire was on January 7, 2025. One week later, Aghili had to return to CSUF to start her spring semester classes. All she could think about was the loss and the shock of losing her home. 

​She said, “There was never an alternative idea for the gallery exhibition. I’ve been using the past 10 months to channel these complex emotions into my show. In fact, the exhibition made me motivated. It gave me a purpose on where to put my thoughts and energy. It’s why I feel so validated and appreciative of all the people who came to my show. The public’s reaction to my show reminded me that my experience was seen and not forgotten.”

CSUF student Mia Aghili is making art about the loss of her family home in January’s Altadena Eaton Fire. Photos taken in the gallery during Aghili ‘s CSUF art show, Scars and Endurance. Photo by Emerson Little

Aghili’s exhibition, Scars and Endurance, served as a visual meditation on loss, memory, and regeneration, anchored in the experience of the Eaton Fire. She explained that this traumatic rupture marked a pivotal shift in her artistic practice from documentation to transformation. Through painting and sculpture, her work explores the coexistence of destruction and beauty, and how nature persists even as personal landmarks vanish, according to Aghili’s artist statement. The series of paintings and her sculptural centerpiece within the university’s Leo Freedman Gallery were accompanied by projected photographs documenting family memories taken inside the home that no longer exists. They were all on display at CSUF from October 28th to November 1st.

​In her own words, “this series pairs realism with surrealism, memory with materiality. It intentionally blurs the boundary between what was and what remains. These paintings do not aim to recreate devastation, but rather evoke the suspended state between grief and healing. This middle space, the ‘after’ that is not yet recovery of the fires, has become the subject.” 

​Her family’s reactions to the show were complex. She said that when they first entered the space, they were silent for a long time, taking it all in. 

​“My parents, in particular, felt a mix of emotions,” said Aghili. “They told me that since the fire, they’ve been moving so quickly, focused on rebuilding, on being in what my dad described as ‘fixer mode.’ The work reminded them not only of the loss, but also of the warmth and love that filled our home.”

​When asked if she thinks the fire and loss of her home are going to continue to influence her art, Aghili responded, “I would say that the fire and loss of my home will continue to influence my work for a long time. The aftermath of the fire has profoundly shifted my artistic journey, pushing me to explore materials and techniques I might never have considered before. Through this process, I feel that I’m finally beginning to find my own style and way of artmaking. The aftermath of the Altadena Eaton fire has become the beginning of a new chapter of my life and art.”

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