Traces of Us

Project Description:

Traces of Us is a group exhibition consisting of six installation-based artists who connect audiences to the cultural elements of their diasporic communities. This multi-disciplinary exhibition connects guests to the work of Chinese, Moroccan, Iranian, Bulgarian, Ukrainian, and South Indian diasporic artists. Their work activates the space through a variety of media; motion graphics, silk and sound, film and sculpture, ceramics, mixed media, and virtual reality. Each medium is derivative or inspired by the artist’s diasporic histories, bridging their familial stories to present time. As viewers explore this environment, they enter spaces inspired by the artist's lived experiences or familial heritage.

Artists:

Sasha Shevchenko (she/her) is a Ukrainian, Tkaronto/Toronto based interdisciplinary artist. Inspired by her experience as a Ukrainian person of diaspora, her practice bridges interests in sculpture, textile, archaeology, and intimate ethnography.

Matthew Davies (he/him) is a multimedia artist with Chinese and British heritage, hailing from Toronto. Their artistic endeavors encompass 3D art, sound design, composition, and live performance. Their creative focus revolves around fostering meaningful collaborations primarily within the digital sphere, as a way to reciprocate the sense of belonging and purpose they have gained from various communities.

Par Nair (she/her) is an Indian born interdisciplinary artist whose practice centers oil paintings, hand embroidery, installation, and performative work to explore dual identities, hybrid cultures and fragmented realities of migrants.

Shahrzad Amin (she/her) is an Iranian-Canadian award-winning interdisciplinary artist. Her interest in fundamental social issues such as democracy, human rights, equality, and migration has informed an art practice examining diasporic and socio-cultural subjectivities through the lenses of art practice, sensory ethnographic filmmaking, architectural design, gender, and language.

Rihab Essayh (she/her) was born in Morocco and raised in Montreal. Essayh is an interdisciplinary artist whose large-scale, immersive installations create spaces of slowing down and softening. Her research considers issues of isolation and disconnection in the digital age, imagining futurities of soft-strength and social reconnection by proposing a heightened attunement to colour, costume, tactility and sound.

Stoyan Barakov (he/him) is a Bulgarian-Canadian artist, creator, and maker living in Toronto, Canada. His work engages ideas of nostalgia, memory, and displacement while combining methodologies and contexts from his Bulgarian upbringing.