Publication_Information
Short film series: The Sea In Its Thirst is Trembling (2019) by Dawit L. Petros, and Portrait or Landscape, Anahita? by Sepideh Behrouzian
October 02, 2025 - October 02, 2025
As part of A Topographical Summit, short films by Dawit L. Petros and Sepideh Behrouzian will be presented in tandem. Both films will be introduced by the artists, and a live discussion period will follow the screenings. Petros’ The Sea In Its Thirst Is Trembling (2019) documents a collaborative sound intervention conceived for Ríos Intermitentes (Intermittent Rivers) during the 13th Havana Biennial in Matanzas, Cuba. The live performance took place along the San Juan River, under a bridge, which ultimately connected musical traditions, histories, and cultures. Behrouzian’s Portrait or Landscape, Anahita? (2023) follows the continuous shaping of a colonial frontier: from oil-mining as a colonial practice, spanning through the promise of development becoming the new placeholder for “overcoming” extractive colonial practices, all the way to a flattened representation of a dystopian climate devastation that obscures its asymmetrical effects. Image credit: installation photograph of Rounding, 2024, film still of Walk on by, Sandra Brewster, 2018, 2:28 min. Photo courtesy of Carey Shaw.
About the Artists
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.
Dawit L. Petros is a visual artist, researcher and educator. Born in Eritrea, Petros also lived in Ethiopia and Kenya before his family moved to Canada. Arriving in Saskatoon as a young child, he entered a landscape and culture very different from his East African origins. Over time, he and his family became part of a close-knit Eritrean community and established a strong sense of connection in the Prairie city. Petros has described Saskatoon as foundational to his artistic practice.
Petros completed the Whitney Independent Study Program, an MFA in Visual Art from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and Tufts University; a BFA in Photography from Concordia University and a BA in History from the University of Saskatchewan. Petros is represented by Tiwani Contemporary in London, UK and Bradley Ertaskiran in Montreal, Canada.
