BIO

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Naghmeh Sharifi is an Iranian / Canadian multidisciplinary artist and educator based in Tiohtiá:ke / Mooniyang / Montreal since 2009. She holds a BA in Visual Arts and one in Psychology from the University of British Columbia. In 2018 Sharifi completed her MFA degree at Concordia University. Since 2008, her work has been exhibited in Iran, Germany, France, Italy, Mexico, United States, Canada and Macedonia. In Montréal, she has presented her work at Conseils des arts de Montréal (2015), Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery (2017), the MAI (2018) and the Phi Centre (2020) among many other sites. Sharifi was the recipient of the Impressions Residency grant at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in 2015 and the Phi Centre's Parallel Lines Residency in 2020. Traditionally trained as a painter, in the recent years Sharifi's choice of medium has expanded in response to her transforming subject matters. Sharifi’s most recent projects are an animated short-film The GraveSleepers and an audio-visual installation entitled Fading Fables (Zar-Afshun).

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STATEMENT

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My multidisciplinary practice encompasses painting, drawing, sculpture, installation, animation and digital media.  My interests are rooted in a fascination with the body – its psychology, its ability to be a place of memory, and as a shell for our presence. I investigate the way bodies contextualize themselves in, against, engulfed, or invaded by spaces they inhabit by using a variety of mediums. Through blurring borders, separating the figure and ground, I highlight at once the fragility and the agency of the body as a manifestation of critical cartography. I water down and dilute mediums to explore the hazy and uncertain places my figures navigate. Ultimately, I question how we would be read and how we might shape space for ourselves in the world if stripped of all context.