Stories of struggle and hope
Artist has found a common theme among Canada’s newest citizens
WATERLOO REGION — Sumaira Tazeen was an established artist, an associate professor in Karachi, Pakistan, an independent woman with connections and a professional career.
But life could feel a bit constricted in a conservative society like Pakistan’s, and friends in Canada encouraged her to move here.
She made the move in 2012, but found the transition wasn’t an easy one.
“When you come here, you burn all your boats,” she said in an interview in her studio in her Cambridge home.
“You start from scratch, even if you were established already. It’s very tough.”
Adapting to a different culture, climate, foods, and having to rebuild a professional network and artistic credentials was a challenge.
She’s exploring those challenges, and those of other immigrant women, during her year-long stint as Kitchener’s artist-in-residence.
The stories of those women are helping shape the art she’s creating as part of the project, which she calls “Healing and Surviving: Sabz Bagh”, which translates as “The grass is greener.”
Her art melds elements from her native Pakistan, and her training as a specialist in Mughal-style miniature painting, with her adopted country.
After coming to Canada, she learned about birchbark biting, an art form practised by Ojibwa and other Algonquian women, who create intricate patterns by carefully biting paper-thin pieces of birchbark.
The act of biting the bark, and then creating something beautiful from it, struck her as a metaphor for the frustrations many immigrant women feel as they struggle to adapt and succeed in their new life in Canada.
She’s creating a large artwork based on a stylized image of a sunflower, made up of hundreds of nickel-sized circles of birchbark.
This spring, she held a series of workshops at Victoria Hills community centre with several immigrant women — from the Middle East, South Asia, Africa and the Far East.
Together they shared stories and helped create a piece of textile art, embroidering fine-lined irises onto bright scarlet cloth. She recorded interviews about the struggles they faced as newcomers in a strange land.
She invited them to create individual templates by pricking a paper with a pin, and will use the designs to create a painting.
She also went to a number of public events, where she worked on her art and encouraged members of the public to contribute to it.
Men, women and children who came to her booth were invited to bite their own small circle of birchbark, which she’ll incorporate into her larger artwork.
While the project documents challenges and frustrations of newcomers, it’s also about hope, Tazeen says.
The flowers that feature in her art are a traditional element in miniature painting. Gardens are about hope as well as struggle, she said.
Her work as artist-in-residence was fascinating and enriching, as she was able to meet with and talk to people all over the city.
“When you meet people and you share your story, they share their stories,” she said, adding that she was struck by the similarity of the stories, even if they were told by people from very different backgrounds.
An exhibit of her work from her year as artist-in-residence will be on display at City Hall in December. The exhibition will include artwork in several different media: the iris-themed textile art she created with the women in her workshop, a sunflower montage made of the birchbark circles people bit, sound recordings that will be played from boxes that feature the stylized sunflower pattern in her larger works.