Shoora Majedian Selected for the William and Isabel Pope NSCAD Painting Residency 2023

Shoora Majedian in her studio, Photo credit: Byron Dauncey

The recipient of the 2022 Joe Plaskett Painting Award has been selected for the William and Isabel Pope NSCAD Painting Residency 2023. Shoora Majedian is an Iranian/Canadian painter based in Vancouver. She obtained her MFA from Emily Carr University in 2021 and currently serves as a sessional lecturer. Her work explores the embedded ramifications of theocracy while thinking about the ever-evolving relationship between the human body and its surroundings.

Inspired by personal experiences and haptic visuality, she incorporates movement, chaos, and contrasting visuals into her art to engage more than just the sense of sight. Her inspiration derives from everyday life, community dynamics, and mythological visual storytelling. During her creative process, she departs from the imaginative sketches and visual references, combines these elements, make thoughtful choices in content and colors, and employ diverse mark making to achieve gradual transformations.

Since 2011, the Robert Pope Foundation and NSCAD University (Nova Scotia College of Art and Design) have jointly offered a two-month-long residency with a studio and an honorarium to an outstanding Canadian painter each year. Shoora will have access to a spacious painting studio at NSCAD University’s Fountain Campus, along with an $8,000 honorarium from the Robert Pope Foundation, enabling her to advance her painting research and create a body of work for a two-week solo exhibition at NSCAD’s Anna Leon Owens Gallery.

Exploring the themes of dance and singing, two activities banned for women in Iran, Shoora will continue her study on composition and color choices by examining Western old masters alongside the repetition and movement of figures in Persepolis Apadana bas-reliefs. During this period, Shoora plans to delve deeper into her research on the quality of pigments and surface ground preparation for her paintings.

For more information about Shoora Majedian, visit:
Website: www.shooramajedian.com
Instagram: @shoora_majedian