Bio
Raha Fard has a Master’s Degree in Telecommunication Engineering and 14 years of experience before OCAD U. She explores the intersection of body, psychoanalysis, politics, and art as a member of the Iranian diaspora and a cancer survivor.
Raha was selected as one of the three artist-researchers for AGO X RBC Emerging Artist Exchange Program in 2024. She exhibited her works in Iran, Canada, Italy, and Korea. OCAD U President’s Award, Patricia Joy Alpert Memorial Award, Full Ontario Graduate Scholarship, Graduate Studies Research Grant, First Year Graduate Award, Art Gallery of Mississauga’s 4th Annual Juried Show Second Prizeand Scarborough Arts' 36th Annual Juried Exhibition Award are some of her awards. She published a novel in Farsi “محوشدگی”, which was included in the list of ten Farsi books published outside Iran in 2023 by BBC Farsi.
Artist Statement
I am floating in blood. Innocent people are being executed each dawn. Their eyes will not leave me, their enthusiastic eyes, that are filled with hope. My body is woven in the pain and suffering I perceive from their traumatized bodies. I feel smothered by my sympathies. I repress the anger inside my body, the anger that comes from the sense of being helpless in my existence.
For The Woven Bodies Series, I incorporated my body’s silhouette from the Evanescence Archival Performance Series (a photograph series taken while I was moving unconsciously with a Persian Rug covering my body) to make the floral patterns of Persian rugs’ various designs, by digital collage in Photoshop, and woven by jacquard loom, to evoke the carpet’s embodiment for the audience, and resonate with the interwoven pain in my body. My body is repeated between the textile patterns of the Persian Rug and the photo-documented performance act of being covered by the rug itself. The photography series brings my body’s unsettlement, isolation, and suffering into the work.
