STATEMENT
Anahita Norouzi is a multidisciplinary artist, originally from Tehran and active in Montreal since 2018. She holds advanced degrees in Fine Arts and Graphic Design from Concordia University in Montreal. For the past 5 years, she has been traveling often between Iran and Canada to conduct her research which lies at the intersection of colonial histories, experiences of immigration and displacement, and the issue of identity and memory.
Her practice is research-driven, instigated by marginalized histories and the legacies of botanical explorations and archeological excavations, particularly when scientific research became entangled in the colonial exploitation of non-Western geographies. Articulated across a range of materials and mediums including sculpture, installation, photography, and video, her work interrogates different cultural and political perspectives on the human and non-human “other,” underlining the complex space between conflicted state of displaced people, plants, and cultural artifacts, and the responsibilities of the host country.
Norouzi’s work have been shown internationally, most recently at BIENALESUR, the International Contemporary Art Biennial of South America (Buenos Aires), Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Royal Ontario Museum (Toronto), and soon at Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec and MAC Montreal. She has received numerous grants, fellowships, and awards, most notably, the Grantham Foundation Award, Liz Crockford Artist Fund Award, the Vermont Studio Center Merit. She is the winner of Contemporary art award of Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec in 2023, Impression residency at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in 2022, and the Magic of Persia Contemporary Art Prize for pieces shown at the Henry Moore Gallery in London and in Dubai.