Join us on Saturday, January 24th 5 – 8 PM for the opening reception of Tracing Symmetries by Safoura Zahedi, including a fireside chat with Safoura and Barâa Arar starting at 6PM.
Tracing Symmetries is an image-based exhibition that invites you into the mesmerizing world of Islamic geometry and imagines a future for this craft in contemporary art and architecture.
Through field research and travels to 17 countries, 40 cities and counting, Zahedi traces the emergence and spread of Islamic patterns in architecture and handicrafts across major historic Islamic dynasties from the seventh to nineteenth century. She asks: how do patterns endure, migrate, and transform, and how they might offer a lens for imagining the future of craft and design?
“Islamic geometry is alive and evolving. It has for centuries, its infinite permutations adapting to meet the current moment… For Safoura, the photography of beautiful places and patterns is not the end point. It is the departure.”
— Safoura Zahedi, as told to Barâa Arar in an essay published as a supplement to the exhibition.
Tracing Symmetries is part of DesignTO.
Safoura Zahedi is an artist, architect, educator, and the founder of SZS — an interdisciplinary art and design studio with a focus on creating spaces, sculptural installations, and public artworks that reimagine the role of geometry in contemporary placemaking.
Safoura’s multimodal practice blends art and architecture, craft and technology, spirituality and materiality, using geometry as a spiritual design tool to create spatial experiences that inspire connection to our natural world and across cultures. She teaches at Toronto Metropolitan University and the King’s Foundation School of Traditional Arts (UK) and serves on the Executive Board of Building Equality in Architecture Toronto.
Contributors:
Safoura Zahedi (Artist, SZS /Safoura Zahedi Studio) and Barâa Arar (Writer).
Curated by:
Safoura Zahedi