Please join us at the gallery on Mar. 22 at 7 PM to participate in conversation with Zinnia Naqvi and Zehra Nawab on the occasion of Zinnia’s exhibition the person you don’t see in this image is me, the camera person.
Zehra Nawab is a multidisciplinary artist working in documentary-film, journalism, illustration and theatre. She is the writer and co-director of the documentary ‘Home Truths,’ exhibited as part of the travelling ‘Making Heimet’ exhibit from the Venice Biennale. Zehra is the recipient of the Agahi Award, Journalist of the Year 2016: Reporting on Culture, for the Herald magazine cover-story ‘Seeking Paradise’. She has also co-directed the experimental documentary-film ‘Mad Mad Mad Film World’ which screened at the Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver. She is presently collaborating with Pat The Dog theatre on writing ‘The Vintage Project.’ As an illustrator she has most notably designed the cover for ‘Sita Under the Crescent Moon’ published by Simon & Schuster In. She has also illustrated for the Registry Theatre and for The New Quarterly. Zehra is the top 3 finalist in the Best Local Artist category of the Waterloo Record Readers’ Choice Awards.
Zinnia Naqvi (she/her) is a lens-based artist working in Tkaronto/Toronto, Canada. Her work examines issues of colonialism, cultural translation, social class and citizenship through the use of photography, video, the written word, and archival material. Recent projects have included archival and re-staged images, experimental documentary films, video installations, graphic design, and elaborate still-lives. Her artworks often invite the viewer to consider the position of the artist and the spectator, as well as analyze the complex social dynamics that unfold in front of the camera.
Naqvi’s work has been shown across Canada and internationally. Recent solo exhibitions have been presented at Whippersnapper Gallery in Toronto, C’cap in Winnipeg, Dazibao and Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain in Montreal. She is a 2022 Fall Flaherty/Colgate Filmmaker in Residence and recipient of the 2019 New Generation Photography Award organized by the National Gallery of Canada. Naqvi is member of EMILIA-AMALIA Working Group, an inter-generational feminist collective. Naqvi received a BFA in Photography Studies from Toronto Metropolitan University and an MFA in Studio Arts from Concordia University. She is currently a sessional lecturer at the University of Toronto and Toronto Metropolitan University.
Presented in partnership with the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre (CFMDC).