Opening November 7th in our Project Gallery is What Seems Simple by Nasim Pirhadi.
In this work, Nasim stages ordinary gestures — reading a book, brushing her hair, tying a shoelace, biting an apple, taking measurements — within the suspension of an underwater world. These gestures reflect the ways life continues, even when its flow is altered by circumstance.
Underwater, the page cannot be turned without resistance, the lace floats and twists — fingers struggling to hold a knot in suspension, a breath escapes in fragile bubbles. What might be effortless elsewhere is transformed into a struggle here. And yet, the body persists. These acts are carried out with calm insistence until difficulty itself becomes routine.
The work proposes a meditation on relativity. A single act can be seamless in one world and heavy in another. This is not about the futility of action but about the familiarity of endurance. It is about how hardship, when lived with daily, becomes normalized — how what should have been easy is instead performed under pressure, and how life continues.
Join us for an Opening Reception for Nasim’s exhibition in the Project Gallery on November 7 2025, 6-8pm.
Nasim Pirhadi is a multidisciplinary artist living and working on the unceded, traditional territory of the syilx Okanagan Nation in Kelowna, BC.
Her work incorporates video, sound, olfactory elements, performance, and sculpture to create multisensory experiences where each component is interconnected. She investigates questions of female identity, subjectivity, and feminist perspectives within historical and contemporary frameworks. She has exhibited her work internationally in solo and group exhibitions in Canada, Iran, Germany, Austria, England, France, Sri Lanka, and the United States. Her work has been recognized with awards, including the Selected Award at the Third Contemporary Drawing Festival in Iran (2011) and being named one of eight finalists for the Behnam Bakhtiar Award in Monaco (2017). In 2022, she received the Audain Travel Award to support a research trip to New York.