Many people that immigrate to Canada from across the globe can relate to re-imagining their identity as they settle into a new life and country. This theme is central to our current exhibition Across Latitudes (July 20 – September 29, 2024) featuring artists Soheila Esfahani, Heidi McKenzie and Zinnia Naqvi. These three artists have grappled with feelings of being in an in-between place or something post-colonial theorist Homi Bhabha calls the “third space.”
Artist Soheila Esfahani’s work A Trace of the Traceless, Pier 21 (2016) manifests this reality. In this work, Esfahani brings together iconography from her home country Iran and layers it with an iconic tourist souvenir she has collected in Canada. In the photo below, for example, we see an icon from Pier 21 in Halifax, the port where so many newcomers arrive and start their lives in Canada, placed on top of an Iranian pattern that has been laser-etched into the wooden panel. The green foliage, a symbol for new growth perhaps, binds these two cultural images together, creating something new.
In August we welcomed a group of students from Heartland International English School to tour the exhibition. After the tour they sat together and were asked to create a self-portrait using their own image (we snapped photos of the group when they arrived) and images of Canadian icons such as a maple leaf, beavers, mountains, and so on.
Soheila Esfahani, A Trace of the Traceless, Pier 21 (2016)
The group was so quiet and focused on the project. Each person crafting a new image of themselves with the Canadian content.
This program is made possible thanks to the support of Rama Gaming House and Charitable Gaming Community Good through their Charitable Bingo initiatives.
Participants from Italy and Portugal.
– Jennifer Polo, Programming & Education
