Exhibition

ZAAR

ZAAR by Sepideh Behrouzian

ZAAR begins with a dried river. In this site-specific installation for Trinity Square Video, Sepideh Behrouzian traces the ecological and political afterlives of extraction through the Zayandeh Rud river in Esfahan.

In this installation, the shrinking terrain of the Gavkhuni wetland is reduced to a vibrating line. Here, the river no longer retreats—it trembles.

ZAAR explores the intersection of ecological disappearance and “survival technology.” Through a fragment of the Zaar ritual, pain is transformed into rhythm, breaking away from linear progress and entering the space of repetition and invocation. The installation invites you into a field of intersecting grids, talismanic diagrams, and mirrored surfaces—placing the viewer within the same pulse as the river and the body.

Dates: On until April 14th

Sepideh Behrouzian

Sepideh Behrouzian

Sepideh Behrouzian (b. 1985, Iran) is a Toronto based artist and researcher. Her
practice examines how symbolic systems such as language, images, and technological
frameworks do not simply describe the world but actively organize and produce it,
sustaining certain lives and landscapes while exhausting others.

Her long term research project, The Promises of Ever-Coming Prosperity, traces the
ecological and political afterlives of extraction through the Zayandeh Rud river in
Esfahan. She is a current fellow of the Mensch–Maschine program at E-WERK
Luckenwalde in Germany and was previously a resident at the Jan van Eyck Academie
in the Netherlands.

About Trinity Square

Founded in 1971, it is one of Canada’s first artist-run centres and its oldest media arts centre. We are a not-for-profit, charitable organization.

For 50 years, Trinity Square has been a champion of media arts practices. Our activities are guided by a goal to increase our members’ and audiences’ understanding and imagination of what media arts practices can be. Trinity Square strives to create supportive environments, encouraging artistic and curatorial experimentation that challenge medium specificity through education, production and presentation supports.

As video-based practices have become increasingly present across disciplines, Trinity Square engages artists and curators in critical investigations into the changing conditions of perception, materiality and the virtual. We consider all of our artistic activities and structures through a process of critical self-reflection, continuously evaluating the ethical positioning of our programming, jury structures, inter-organizational relationships, et cetera. In addition to holding aesthetic worth in its own right, our artistic programming extends our education and production activities in order to generate new knowledges.

Trinity Square’s programming is guided by three priorities: 1) promoting an expanded definition of media arts; 2) promoting the meaningful engagement of diverse voices in all levels of our operations; and 3) supporting and nurturing the production of new works by artists and curators. Our membership represents the diversity of the city and honours the original mandate of the organization—seeking to reduce barriers to access related to race, gender, sexual orientation, and socio- economic and physical ability.

Gallery Opening Hours