Abedar Kamgari is an artist, curator, and arts worker based in Hamilton and Toronto. She makes performance art, sculptures, textiles, and videos. Abedar intentionally engages tactile, repetitive, and labour-intensive artmaking strategies as way of reflecting on the contexts and conditions of displacement and diaspora. Her current projects explore body memory, complicated inheritances, and the idea of distance. Her research is inspired by a play written by her father, feminist writings, archeological ruins, and the enduring presence of land.
Abedar has performed and exhibited in a range of institutional contexts, including at the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto), Art Gallery of Hamilton (Hamilton), Blackwood Gallery (Mississauga), Struts Gallery (Sackville, NB), Idea Exchange (Cambridge), and Y+ Contemporary (Scarborough). Abedar holds a BFA in Studio Art (2016) and an MFA in Interdisciplinary Studio (2022).
As a curator and administrator, she has organized numerous exhibitions, screenings and public programs including To see and see again (2019), Daily Bread (2018), Photophobia: Contemporary Moving Image Festival (2018-2021), and Pressure Points: Gentrification and the Arts in Hamilton (2019). Abedar was the Programming Director at Hamilton Artists Inc. from 2018-2022 and now works as the Artistic Director at South Asian Visual Arts Centre (SAVAC) in Toronto.
CV available upon request.
I acknowledge the funding support of the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, and City of Hamilton.
Biography
Biography
Abedar Kamgari is an artist, curator, and arts worker based in Hamilton and Toronto. She makes performance art, sculptures, textiles, and videos. Abedar intentionally engages tactile, repetitive, and labour-intensive artmaking strategies as way of reflecting on the contexts and conditions of displacement and diaspora. Her current projects explore body memory, complicated inheritances, and the idea of distance. Her research is inspired by a play written by her father, feminist writings, archeological ruins, and the enduring presence of land.
Abedar has performed and exhibited in a range of institutional contexts, including at the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto), Art Gallery of Hamilton (Hamilton), Blackwood Gallery (Mississauga), Struts Gallery (Sackville, NB), Idea Exchange (Cambridge), and Y+ Contemporary (Scarborough). Abedar holds a BFA in Studio Art (2016) and an MFA in Interdisciplinary Studio (2022).
As a curator and administrator, she has organized numerous exhibitions, screenings and public programs including To see and see again (2019), Daily Bread (2018), Photophobia: Contemporary Moving Image Festival (2018-2021), and Pressure Points: Gentrification and the Arts in Hamilton (2019). Abedar was the Programming Director at Hamilton Artists Inc. from 2018-2022 and now works as the Artistic Director at South Asian Visual Arts Centre (SAVAC) in Toronto.
CV available upon request.
I acknowledge the funding support of the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, and City of Hamilton.