Soheila Esfahani

Soheila Esfahani grew up in Tehran, Iran, and moved to Canada in 1992. She received her Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Western Ontario and her BA in Fine Arts from the University of Waterloo. She is an award-winning visual artist and recipient of numerous grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Region of Waterloo Arts Fund. She is a recipient of 2016 Waterloo Region Arts Awards and was nominated for the Jameel Prize at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, UK in 2015. Her work has been exhibited across Canada from Vancouver to Halifax and collected by various public and private institutions, including the Canada Council’s Art Bank. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor at the Western University and is a member of the Red Head Gallery in Toronto. For more information, please visit her website.

International Women's Day 2021: Go; Rise and Strike

My Place is Placeless, 2013

Esfahani’s art practice explores the terrains of cultural translation and investigates the processes involved in cultural transfer and transformation. Returning to the etymological roots of translation as “carrying or bringing across,” her Cultured Pallets series uses shipping pallets to embody and facilitate the notion of cultural translation. These transient installations emerge from her ongoing process of marking shipping pallets with various ornamentation. After exhibiting the work, she returns the pallets to circulation and track them by engaging in correspondence with those who find them. Her installations evoke issues of migration as people, ultimately, function as “bearers” and “translators” of culture in our current globalized state.

Recent work by Soheila

Birds: Pattern (dis)Placed, 3D printed Resin, 2019

“Cultured Pallets: SAIB”, acrylic on wooden shipping pallets, 24’x 48″x 10′, 2018

“The Immigrants: Canada 150”, custom ceramic decals on ceramic plates & collected blue & white ceramic plate

Birds: Pattern (dis)Placed, 3D printed Resin, 2019

“The Immigrants: Canada 150”, custom ceramic decals on ceramic plates & collected blue & white ceramic plates, 2017

Our Partners

E M B A S S Y C U L T U R A L H O U S E . C A

The Embassy Cultural House (ECH) is located on the traditional lands of the Anishinaabek, Haudenosaunee, Lūnaapéewak, and Chonnonton peoples, at the forks of Deshkan Ziibi (Antler River), an area subject to the Dish with One Spoon Covenant Wampum and other treaties, colonized as London, Ontario. The ECH strives to create meaningful relationships between the Indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island and our contributors. The ECH honours the stewardship of the many Indigenous peoples who have resided on these lands since time immemorial.