Download catalogue essay by Mackenzie Aker
The Garden of Memories
In Persian culture creation of gardens is a metaphor for the creation of Paradise on earth, and it revives the connection of humans with the infinite world. The image of lush gardens and flowers has been adopted and used in Persian architecture, carpet designs, ceramics, among other cultural endeavours. Generations have passed, but the garden motifs have continuously been repeated, reconstructed, and recording the worldview of a civilization which is today encountered with different levels of conflict all over its cultural map extending from the Mediterranean Sea in the west to the Indus Valley in the east.
By exploring the layers of a floral motif of Persian carpet and remaking it in ceramic, The Garden of Memories is a reflection on how historical objects and motifs are carriers of the past and translators of untold stories to a new generation who may forget or receive the distorted versions of their heritage.
In the process of remaking the motif in clay and entrusting its fragments to the kiln, the fired objects traveled through time and gradually aged by passing through one physical and chemical state to another. Is the deconstructed form reflecting a ruin? Does it illustrate a struggle for reconstruction or is it unveiling the incapability of the observer in accessing the content behind the world of the gardens?
About the Artist
Reihan Ebrahimi is a ceramic artist of Iranian origin based in Tiohtiá:ke/ Montreal. She moved to Canada in 2015 and received her BFA in ceramics in 2020 from Concordia University. Her works focus on notions of time, memory, and cultural identity, and her archeological approach has a research-based practice, nourished by her studio practice, personal experiences, and studies in art and cultural history of Persian civilization.
In pursuit of her interconnected interest in ceramics and art history, in 2019, she collaborated in a research project with Montreal Fine Arts Museum to reconceptualize their Iranian ceramic collection, which has been part of "The Arts of One World" exhibition.
Ebrahimi is the co-curator and co-founder of Nowruz Projects, a multicultural collective which curates events focused on the rite of Nowruz in Western Asia. The project is developed around the theme of "ritual as a space for rebirth, reunion and appreciation of diversity.