Safoura Zahedi
Born in Japan and raised in Iran and Canada, I am an artist, architect, educator, and geometry expert currently living and working in Toronto. I bring a cross-cultural and interdisciplinary approach to the study of geometry and how it can be used as a spiritual design tool to create spaces and artworks that encourage curiosity, meditation, and connection.
In 2022, I travelled to 17 countries and over 40 cities to study geometric patterns in art and architecture across major historic Islamic dynasties. Islamic design often uses repeating geometric patterns that invoke natural forms to gesture at the multiplicity within universal oneness. Bringing together my cultural heritage and western design education, my work engages with both time-honoured crafts and digital technologies to reflect on the relationship between spirituality and materiality in an effort to create spatial experiences that bring people into closer communion with themselves and others.
WHY GEOMETRY?
Geometry is a mathematical field that helps us understand the most essential building blocks of the natural world and manifest our built environment. One of the most pervasive and powerful systems in our lives, geometry is at once structure and void, process and product, functional and aesthetic. It consists of immutable forms yet unleashes endless permutations. It is all of these tensions — and possibilities — that keep me hooked.
Geometry is also a spiritual language. In traditional Islamic architecture and design, geometric patterns gesture at the multiplicity within universal oneness, refracting multitudes while simultaneously pointing towards unity and totality.
For me, the act of creation is spiritual. I aspire to produce works that invite us to contemplate the interconnected nature of the universe, our cross-cultural relationships, and the intersectional facets that comprise our identities and values.
INTERSECTING CRAFT + COMPUTATION
Inspired by Islamic craft, architecture, and spiritual traditions, my work reinterprets and expands on geometrical patterns found in Islamic design and handcrafts using today’s computational tools and fabrication techniques. I am fascinated by novel ways of translating 2D geometric patterns into 3D spatial experiences.
AREAS OF WORK + EXPERTISE
Architecture + Interior Design
Private art commissions + public art
Installation Art + exhibition design
Bespoke geometrically-inspired interior + architectural elements (stairs, screens, skylights +)
Digital fabrication
Educational workshops + talks