Additional Images

Provenance:

Courtesy of the artist; Franz Kaka Gallery, Toronto. Photo: LFdocumentation.

The Work & Artist Bio

Diver II, 2023, is an intense and beautiful voyage into layered space and the subtleties of convergence. Born in Iran, the artist moved to Canada when she was 23. She evidences, in her simultaneously present and elusive paintings the many temporalities and backgrounds that are her own history. This convergence of rich multiplicities allows her to “bypass reductive categories,” as she said in her 2023 interview with Border Crossings, and makes possible the creation of an aesthetic world of shifting and dissolving boundaries. In Diver II, Elmizadeh has framed the central image, as she does in some of her works and then extends beyond the frame, implying, even in this 8 x 10” canvas, that the image is boundless. In its palette, it is celestial, the layering and soft edges giving her work a dreamy, expansive, other-worldly quality.

Azadeh Elmizadeh (b. 1987, Tehran, Iran) is a visual artist based in Toronto, Canada. She holds an MFA from the University of Guelph and a BFA from OCAD University and Tehran University. Since 2020 Elmizadeh has presented solo and two-person exhibitions at Sea View (Los Angeles, US); Tube Culture Hall (Milan, IT); the Southern Alberta Art Gallery (Lethbridge, AB); and Franz Kaka (Toronto, CA). Her work has been exhibited internationally at Europa and Harkawik (both New York, US); Public Gallery (London, UK); Anat Ebgi (Los Angeles, US); The Blackwood (Mississauga, CA); Kamloops Art Gallery (British Columbia, CA). Elmizadeh’s work has been written about in Hyperallergic, Frieze, Border Crossings, Blackflash Magazine, The Globe and Mail, the Editorial, Canadian Art and Elle Canada. She was the 2020 recipient of the Joseph Plaskett Award in painting. Elmizadeh has had presentations at fairs including Art Toronto, Nada Miami, the Armory Show in New York and Frieze London. Her work is in Collection Majudia, Montréal; RBC Art Collection; Scotiabank Art Collection and Equitable Bank Art Collection. She is represented by Franz Kaka, Toronto.

The Art of Painting: Fifty Ways to Weave Your Story, Border Crossings Issue 162, 2023

Artist's Website

Franz Kaka