Simin Keramati

Simin Keramatic (b. 1970, Tehran) is a multidisciplinary artist and art educator. She received her BA and MA in Fine Arts from Tehran University of Art (1994, 1996). She lives and works in Toronto. Simin Keramati's work often address socio-political issues, through the lens of identity and gender. Women figure prominently in her paintings with their hair unleashed. In "In Between" (2021), an ongoing series of paintings that worked as a "mantra" for the artist during the Covid Pandemic, she depicts female figures accompanied by narratives lodged in Iranian collective memory. "Seppuku" (2018-19) takes the Japanese suicide act as a metaphore for women taking on the challenges of living in a world marred by adversity. "The Edge of the Blade" (2011-2012) recounts moments in life when experiences cut deep into one's inner soul. In her videos she enters into a conversation with Persian literature to evaluated her current situation as a woman living outside her cultural domain. "Elephant in the Dark" (2023), a multimedia and interactive installation with 3D objects, video art, electronic buttons and wood, took the emblematic parable of the elephant in Rumi's "Masnavi" as its point of departure. Migration and exile are recurring themes in many works of the artist. "I am not a female artist from the Middle East in exile, I am an artist" (video, 2014) comments on the three categories of Woman, Exile, and Middle East she has to contend with.