Presence
Artist Biographies

Ghazaleh Avarzamani
(she/her)

Ghazaleh Avarzamani’s research aims at revealing and unsettling the often invisible social hierarchies that govern our lives. Through her practice, she explores the fallacies and inequities in our inherited knowledge and manuals. By creating visual narratives that simultaneously deconstruct and reconstruct time and space, she aims to reconfigure materials to highlight dysfunctionality and failure, utilizing collective human memory and knowledge that is often taken for granted. She reveals the extraordinary about the ordinary, and seeks ways to represent the otherwise taken-for-granted. 

Avarzamani holds an MFA from Central Saint Martins, London. Her work has been exhibited at the Dhaka Art Summit in Bangladesh and India (2023), the Aga Khan Museum, Toronto (2021), MOCA Toronto (2021), Toronto Biennial (2022), Koffler Centre of the Arts, Toronto (2019), Ab-Anbar Gallery, Tehran (2016), Asia House, London (2014), and she has participated in international residencies, including at the Delfina Foundation (2022) and SOMA Mexico City (2018). Her work is held in private and public collections, including the Art Gallery of Ontario, Google, Rockefeller Centre, Arsenal Contemporary, MOCA Toronto, TD Art Collection and Red Mansion.

 Tamara Lee-Anne Cardinal
(she/they)

Tamara Lee-Anne Cardinal is a mixed-media, large-scale installation artist and a community activist. Born in Treaty 6 Territory, her ancestral roots are of Nêhiyaw (Cree), Austrian, Ukrainian, and Deutsch (German) descent. She has been a visitor to Otôskwanihk (Calgary, AB) since 2009. Graduating with a BFA in Sculpture from the Alberta University of the Arts in 2015, Cardinal has been a recipient of the National BMO 1st Art! Award, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts Young Artist Award, the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Emerging Artist Award, and more recently the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Medal. She has been an active member in the urban Indigenous community in Treaty 7 Territory, activating many social service positions throughout the years. Cardinal is a full-time student attending Mount Royal University’s Psychology program, and has been a Public Art Project Lead through Calgary Arts Development since January 2024. Cardinal’s artistic practice continues to be a reflection of the teachings she receives along her journey; it is an invitation for others to become a part of the process, to partake in its making.

 Jayce Salloum
(he/him)

Jayce Salloum tends to go only where he is invited or where there is an intrinsic affinity, his projects being rooted in an intimate engagement with place. A grandson of Syrian or Lebanese immigrants, he was born and raised on others’ land, the Sylix (Okanagan) territory. After years of living elsewheres, he planted himself on the unceded stolen lands of the xʷməθkʷey̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh and səíl̓wətaʔł. Recognizing and acting on this is an everyday practice, but let’s face it, he could do a lot more. In/out of this context, not that it really matters, Salloum has lectured, published, and exhibited pervasively at the widest range of local and international venues possible and most improbable, from the smallest unnamed storefronts in his downtown eastside Vancouver neighbourhood to institutions such as the Musée du Louvre, Museum of Modern Art, Centre Georges Pompidou, the National Gallery of Canada, Bienal De La Havana, Sharjah Biennial, the Biennale of Sydney, and the Rotterdam International Film Festival.

Christine Howard Sandoval
(she/her)

Christine Howard Sandoval (enrolled member of Chalon Nation, Bakersfield, CA) lives and works in the unceded territories of the Squamish, sleil-Waututh, and Musqueam First Nations and is an assistant professor of interdisciplinary praxis in the Audain Faculty of Art at Emily Carr University, Vancouver. Howard Sandoval's work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Art San Diego (2021); Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver (2021); Oregon Contemporary, Portland (2021); and Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College (2019), during which time she was the Mellon Artist in Residence at Colorado College. Her work has been exhibited in the 12th Seoul Mediacity Biennale (2023) and in group exhibitions at the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA (2023); Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle (2023); Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo (MAC USP) (2022); Designtransfer, Universität der Künste Berlin (2013); El Museo del Barrio, New York (2013); and Socrates Sculpture Park, Long Island City, NY (2010). Her work is held in the permanent collections of Forge Project, traditional lands of the Moh-He-Con-Nuck; Hammer Museum at UCLA, Los Angeles; and Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. She holds a BFA from the Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, and an MFA from Parsons, the New School for Design, New York.

Abbas Akhavan
(he/him)

Abbas Akhavan’s practice ranges across site-specific ephemeral installations to drawing, video, sculpture, and performance. The direction of his research has been deeply influenced by the specificity of the sites in which he works, including the architectures that house them, the economies that surround them, and the individuals that frequent them. The concept of the garden—and by extension, the spaces and species just outside the home, such as the backyard, public parks, and other domesticated landscapes—have been foundational components in his work. In recent large-scale installations, Akhavan recreates cultural sites affected by international conflicts, attending to the multivalent ways in which ongoing geopolitics fight for control of historical narratives. Through his work, Akhavan engages with formal, material, and social legacies that shape the boundaries between public and private, domesticated and wild, hostile and hospitable. Upcoming and recent solo exhibitions include La Biennale di Venezia (2026); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2026); Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver (2025); Bangkok Kunsthalle (2025); Copenhagen Contemporary and Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen (2023).  Akhavan received an MFA from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver (2006), and a BFA from Concordia University, Montréal (2004). Recent residencies include Fogo Island Arts, Fogo Island, Canada (2019, 2016, 2013); Atelier Calder, Saché, France (2017); and Flora ars+natura, Bogotá, Colombia (2015). He is the recipient of the Fellbach Triennial Award (2017); Sobey Art Award (2015); Abraaj Group Art Prize (2014); and the Berliner Kunstpreis (2012).

Badlands Art Residency x Lindsay Sutton
(she/her)

With a degree in drawing from the Alberta University of the Arts, Lindsay Sutton’s practice spans multiple mediums and decades. She has worked at various artist-run centres, including Calgary’s Stride Gallery and TRUCK Contemporary Art, during which time she began to explore handmade clothing and design, experimenting with a variety of fabrics and styles. Both a mother and a cancer survivor, Sutton uses quilting and weaving as part of her healing process. Her work has been celebrated in publications such as Uppercase Magazine, HGTV Canada, and the Edmonton Journal. She recently completed a residency at the Badlands Art Department.

Linda Sormin
(she/her)

Born in Bangkok, Thailand, Linda Sormin moved to Canada with her family at the age of five. Sormin’s sculptures and site-responsive installations embody the vulnerable and fragmentary nature of her diasporic experience. Recent exhibitions include two large scale installations in Ceramics in the Expanded Field: Sculpture, Performance and the Possibilities of Clay at MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA, (2021-23), and Hokusai: Inspiration and Influence at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA (2023). Her solo museum exhibition will open in Toronto at the Gardiner Museum in November 2025. Sormin lives and works in New York City.

Since the early 2000s, Sormin has established a distinct visual and material language, using raw clay, fired ceramics, found objects, and interactive methods. She integrates writing, video, sound, and handcut paintings with clay, metal, and wood.  Sormin’s research and writing cast light on how her work has always been influenced – though at times unwittingly – by cultural practices in her family histories rooted in Thailand, China, and Indonesia. Advocating for decolonial approaches since the early 1990s, when she worked in community development in Laos, she has since taught visual art at Emily Carr University, Rhode Island School of Design, Sheridan College, Alfred University, and currently New York University, where she is a tenured Associate Professor of Studio Art and Head of Ceramics. She holds a BA in English Literature (Andrews University,1993), a Diploma in Craft and Design (Sheridan College, 2001) and an MFA in Ceramic Art (Alfred University, 2003). 

Sormin’s work is included in private and public collections including the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston (Boston, MA, USA), Renwick Gallery at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington, DC, USA), Gardiner Museum (Toronto, ON, Canada), CLAY Museum of Ceramic Art (Middelfart, Denmark), Everson Museum of Art (Syracuse, NY, USA), Victoria & Albert Museum (London, UK), Arizona State University Museum, (Tempe, AZ, USA), World Ceramic Exposition (Gyeonggi Province, Korea), and Alfred Ceramic Art Museum (Alfred, NY, USA).