Abedar Kamgari is an emerging artist, curator, and arts worker based in Hamilton and Toronto. In her practice, Abedar unpacks social and cultural complexities of displacement and diaspora using site-responsive, embodied, and relational approaches to performance art. She is currently exploring diasporic archives, familial inheritances, and the slippery idea of distance. Distance may be shaped by time, language, gender, geography, race, and many other factors. Distance is not always a bad thing.

While in residence at Struts, Abedar will further develop these ideas through objects and performances inspired by the set of a play written by her father. Her project considers multiple forms of distance as membranes with varying degrees of permeability. What role might performance and poetry play in both stretching and shrinking distance?

Abedar received a BFA in Studio Art from McMaster University in 2016 and has performed, screened, and exhibited in a range of institutional contexts throughout Southern Ontario since. As a curator and arts worker, she has organized exhibitions, screenings, and community programs on topics such as migration, race, labour, equity, and gentrification. Abedar is currently the Programming Director at Hamilton Artists Inc. and an MFA candidate at OCAD University. You can follow her work on instagram @kamgara or at www.abedarkamgari.com 

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www.abedarkamgari.com