Publication_Information
Artist Workshop: Sepideh Behrouzian
October 03, 2025 - October 03, 2025
As part of A Topographical Summit, Sepideh Behrouzian will host a dialogic workshop in the Rounding Space at the Kenderdine Art Gallery, with specific emphasis on the Contact project, which is a component of a long-term research initiative that employs artistic methodologies to explore the concept of scientific and technological development, alongside the notion of progressive linear temporality. The research uses Esfahan, Iran—Behrouzian's hometown—as a case study to examine the broader implications of imperial extraction, exploration, political turbulence, environmental devastation, and the significant wave of emigration, particularly to North America, with a focus on Canada. Image credit: poster from Spectres of the River: A Study Group by Sepideh Behrouzian, n.d..
About the Artist
Sepideh Behrouzian is an interdisciplinary artist/researcher originally from Iran, who recently moved to Toronto. Her artistic practice explores the coloniality of the image, ocular-centric critique, and its active role in shaping the colonial frontier, extraction, and environmental issues. Behrouzian’s work critically engages with extractivist culture and ocular-centric governance, using research, writing, and creative production to reveal hidden gaps in totalizing governing regimes and open up spaces for alternative knowledge transmission, both human and non-human.
Before moving to Toronto, Sepideh Behrouzian completed a one-year residency program at Jan Van Eyck Academie in the Netherlands. In her current long-term research project, The Promises of Ever-coming Prosperity, she employs artistic methodologies to critically explore scientific and technological development, alongside progressive linear temporality. Reflecting on the halted flow of the Zayandeh Rud river in her hometown, Esfahan, Behrouzian examines the broader effects of imperial extraction, political turbulence, environmental devastation, and emigration.
Behrouzian was awarded the Hauptstadtkulturfonds grant in 2023 to produce her film Portrait or Landscape, Anahita?, which is part of her ongoing research. She is also the recipient of the 2022 Südkulturfonds Artist Prize in Switzerland and was nominated for the Amsterdam Open Book Prize (Versal). Sepideh holds an MFA from the Dutch Art Institute, an MA in Artistic Research, and a BA in Visual Arts from Tehran University of Art. Her work has been exhibited internationally in cities such as Amsterdam, Berlin, Rotterdam, Brussels, Moscow, and Tehran.
