Matilda Aslizadeh

Griffin Art Projects' 2023 North Shore Studio Art Residency Award Winner

Matilda Aslizadeh was born in Isfahan, Iran, and is of Armenian heritage. Her family was part of the first wave of Iranian Immigrants to settle in North Vancouver in the wake of the Islamic revolution. She has resided on the North Shore, on the unceded territories of the Skwxwú7mesh, Tsleil-Waututh, and xwməθkwəýəm Nations, almost continuously since 1982. Her media installations and photo-based works are characterized by dense visual surfaces and unexpected juxtapositions drawn from a range of photographic, cinematic, and painterly influences. Deeply invested in exploring the critical potential of immersive spectacle, the ambivalent centrality of storytelling in human existence, and the fluid threshold between documentation and fictionalization, Aslizadeh’s work locates political thinking firmly within affective experience. Aslizadeh received a BFA from the University of British Columbia and an MFA from the University of California, San Diego. Her work has been exhibited internationally in galleries and festivals, including solo exhibitions at the Vancouver Art Gallery, AC Institute (New York), and Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, and group exhibitions at the Audain Museum (Whistler) and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto. She also teaches film and photography at Emily Carr University of Art and Design, and is a member of art/mamas: a collective of artist mothers who recently participated in PLOT, a community-based residency at Access Gallery.

Resort, video installation, 2016, courtesy of Pari Nadimi Gallery Photo: Robert McNair