Art Lives

Hangama Amiri is an Afghan-Canadian artist whose textile installations examine notions of home and how gender, social norms, and larger geopolitical conflict impact the daily lives of women, both in Afghanistan and in the diaspora. Amiri’s installation, Distance Between Homes (2023) was commissioned for the Museum’s Rumi exhibition.

Drawing inspiration from gardens and traditional Afghan carpets, Shaheer Zazai is an Afghan-Canadian multidisciplinary artist with a focus on exploring and investigating the development of cultural identity. Intrigued by the creative power that exists within limitations and parameters, Zazai’s intricate designs are conceptualized in Microsoft Word and woven in Kabul by a group of local women weavers.

Soheila Esfahani grew up in Tehran, Iran, and moved to Canada in 1992. She received her Master of Fine Arts from Western University and her BA in Fine Arts from the University of Waterloo. She is an award-winning visual artist and the recipient of numerous grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Region of Waterloo Arts Fund. She is a recipient of the Waterloo Region Arts Awards 2016 and was nominated for the Jameel Prize at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, UK, in 2015. Her work has recently been exhibited at the Canadian Cultural Centre, Paris, the Doris McCarthy Gallery, and Cambridge Art Galleries, as well as collected by various public and private institutions, including the Canada Council Art Bank. She is an Assistant Professor at Western University and is a member of the Red Head Gallery in Toronto.

Iranian-Canadian multidisciplinary artist, Simin Keramati works in photography, film, mixed media, and painting. Keramati references various elements from news and social media, her personal life, and her own body in her work, often addressing themes of identity, diasporic experience, women’s rights, and gender equality. Keramati’s installation, The Elephant in the Dark was commissioned by the Museum for Rumi in 2023.

Ekow Nimako is a Toronto-based, internationally exhibiting LEGO® artist who crafts futuristic and whimsical sculptures from the iconic medium. Rooted in his childhood hobby and intrinsic creativity, Nimako’s formal arts education and background as a lifelong multidisciplinary artist inform his process and signature aesthetic. His fluid building style, coupled with the Afrofuturistic themes of his work, beautifully transcend the geometric material to embody organic and fantastical silhouettes. Nimako has exhibited works in Canada, Germany, Korea, and the United Kingdom.

Shaped by experiences in both Pakistan and Canada, Ontario-based contemporary visual artist Tazeen Qayyum‘s work is influenced by socio-political themes of identity and displacement.

Erdem Taşdelen is a visual artist who uses diverse materials and media to construct semi-fictional narratives that incorporate unique historical figures, events, and texts to implicate contemporary sociopolitical realities. Taşdelen’s multimedia installation, The Dream That Must Be Interpreted, was commissioned by the Museum in 2023 for Rumi.