Soheila K. Esfahani

Soheila K. Esfahani grew up in Tehran, Iran, and moved to Canada in 1992. She received her BA in Fine Arts from the University of Waterloo, and her Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Western Ontario. Esfahani has practiced as an artist and educator for more than ten years. She has received numerous awards and grants including the Research/Creation Grant in Fine Arts through Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada. As part of the SSHRCC grant, Esfahani is currently a participant in a research/creation group entitled Immersion Emergencies and Possible Worlds: Engaging Water as Culture and Resource through Contemporary Art and took part in a related residency at the Banff Centre in May 2013. Her work is represented in public and private collections including the Canada Council’s Art Bank. She works from her studio at Kitchener’s artist–run centre, Globe Studios.
Esfahani’s art practice navigates the terrains of cultural translation in order to explore the processes involved in cultural transfer and transformation. Cultured Pallets, on display at Tirgan 2013, is a series transient installation which uses shipping pallets that the artist marks with a variety of collected motifs and designs. The installation focuses on the notion of translation in its etymological meaning as the process of ‘carrying across’. The artist these pallets as metaphors for the transfer of units of ‘culture’, that represent ‘in-betweeness’ by being in a permanent state of transit.