Artwork: My Skin is Thicker Than it Seems (Acrylic and wax medium on canvas, 2022) by Nadia Alikashani

As South-American curator and theorist Suely Rolnik would propose – the world is in convulsion, and so are we. In face of the sinister global landscape that shapes our political, aesthetic, and symbolic worlds, Massy Arts hosts between Nov 15, 2022 and Jan 12, 2023 “A Wish To Voice”, a group show curated by arts coordinator Rafael Zen with works by visual artists Nadia Alikashani, Darius Kian, Parvin Peivandi, Mehran Modarres-Sadeghi, Ellie Fernandes, Yasaman Moussavi, and Elmira Sarreshtehdari.

Questioning the embodiment of macropolitics by the individual, the excitability of political speeches on/in the body, and the place of the artist facing the uprising of reactive/conservative forces by state-nations, this show asked South American and Middle Eastern visual artists living in Vancouver to exhibit works that represented a wish to voice, or a wish to change.

The Massy Arts Gallery is located at 23 East Pender Street in Chinatown, Vancouver.
The gallery is open Tuesday to Sunday, 12pm to 5pm.
Entrance is free, and masks are mandatory.

To contact the gallery, send an email to: info@massyarts.com.

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The  Artists

Nadia Alikashani is a second generation migrant of Iranian descent, living on the unceded and ancestral territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh and Sto:lo peoples. She is an interdisciplinary artist who primarily works with painting and poetry. In their works, they examine how mental illness and intergenerational racial trauma affect youth, the Iranian Diaspora, and herself, while exploring the feelings, frustrations, and love in the long, everlasting process of healing.

Darius Kian is a proud queer Persian-Canadian artist residing on the stolen land of the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the Kwikwetlem, Squamish, Musqueam, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. Their current practice concerns themes of masculinity, queerness, and the intersections of identity and culture. Primarily working in oil paint; Darius is also concerned with the relationship that this chosen medium has with representation, sexualization, and historical grandeur. Darius is driven by a need to represent queer bodies, fat bodies, hairy bodies, and colorful bodies into the canon of contemporary figurative painting.

Parvin Peivandi is an Iranian/Canadian artist that makes art cross disciplines that includes sculpture, ceramics, painting, drawing, performance, installations and community art projects. Born and raised in Iran, Peivandi makes art influenced by Iranian literature and architectural elements: ceramic tiles, mosaic mirrors and rugs. She holds a MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2019) and her BFA from Emily Carr University of Art and Design (2014). She has shown her works internationally and won awards such as Illinois emerging artist award and NCECA 2021 multicultural award. Peivandi’s recent exhibitions include the Burrard Arts Foundation’s residency solo show, Griffin Art Projects and Art Auction/show in the Polygon Gallery. Peivandi’s main body of research is New Materialism and her interests include contemporary art and craft, architecture, performance art, community art projects and design.

Mehran Modarres-Sadeghi is a visual artist based in Vancouver, BC. Originally from Isfahan, Iran, she immigrated to Canada more than 20 years ago. She received an MFA in Visual Arts from Emily Carr University of Art + Design (2017) and a BFA from the University of British Columbia (2007). She also holds a BSc in Physics from Isfahan University of Technology, Isfahan, Iran. Her recent practice is mostly engaged with drawing and sculpture, although she has worked in a variety of media such as photography, painting, and installation. Modarres-Sadeghi’s works are autoethnographic, reflecting her experience of living in Iran and Canada. She has exhibited her work in several solo and group exhibitions and participated in residency programs. Her recent solo exhibitions include Thread at Sunshine Coast Arts Council’s Doris Crowston Gallery, BC (2020), TRACING SHADOWS at Gallery 1515, Vancouver, BC (2021), and Ma Miaeem va Miravim (We Come and Go) at North Vancouver District Library’s Gallery, BC (2022). She was featured in a CBC radio interview by Sheryl MacKay, host of North by Northwest, ECU News, and La Source Forum of Diversity.

Ellie Fernandes is an immigrant trans multidisciplinary artist born in Bahia (Brazil). Her works explore writing and word performance, intermedia painting, textile sculptures and installations. The focus of her work is the creation of a topography that maps the contradictions, limits, impositions and fabulations of a “Foreign Body”, and researches the history of sexual and pornographic work throughout the history of art and its relations with space, and public policies.

Yasaman Moussavi is a PhD student in the Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy studying Art Education. She is an artist and a teacher. In her art practice research, she explores the socio-cultural in-betweenness as a capacity and disposition to participate in meaning-making across cultures and languages. For her, transitional spaces are the performative embodiment of spatial mapping and in-betweenness. Yasaman holds an MFA and a BFA in Visual arts. Her artworks have been displayed in many national and international solo and group exhibitions.

Elmira Sarreshtehdari is an Iranian artist, art researcher, and instructor based in Canada. Elmira is a PhD student in art education at The University of British Columbia and holds an MFA from the University of Calgary. Elmira is interested in the audiences’ encounter with immigrant/dis-placed art and inquires how this aesthetic interaction could provide a proliferating space for further communication and meaning-making between multiple cultures, bodies, mediums, traditions, places, assumptions, and such. Elmira works with different art materials and mediums such as drawing, participatory installation art, sound, and video performance.

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