Each year, Thirding Studio Gallery aims to organize a three-month residency as a part of our arts programming. These residencies will be theme-based designed by the directors and the members of the gallery. We intend to support emerging artists/designers through our residency programs to develop their practice and make art accessible to the Markham community by hosting local, national and international artists in our studio gallery. The participant(s) will receive 24/7 access to Thirding's space for their creative process, obtain support from our mentors, and get an opportunity to exhibit their works. During the residency, we expect the artists to arrange studio visits for the community to interact with their artwork and get a peek into their creative processes. The participant(s) will also give an artist talk at the opening of their exhibitions.
Every year, we will have a call in advance outlining the theme, criteria and deadline to submit applications. This year, we selected an emerging interdisciplinary artist and architecture designer, Hoda Farahani, for our upcoming research-creation residency, which will be held from November 1st, 2021, to January 31st, 2022.
This residency is an effort to bridge the local industrial, residential and artist community in the Markham area. During the residency, the artist will connect with the local businesses, research the area and develop prototypes suggesting the site’s transformation at 333 Denison Street, the plaza where Thirding resides. This residency aims to propose a possible transformation of the plaza that goes beyond an industrial-only to an interdisciplinary creative scene where artistic and industrial qualities can merge to develop a new hybrid character. The main intention of the residency is to show the potential of the area as a creative hub while remaining loyal to its industrial history.
For the last two weeks of the residency, the artist will have the opportunity to exhibit her proposal/prototype in the gallery space as a part of the DesignTO festival 2022. In addition to a solo exhibition, the artist will receive mentoring from two extremely talented, established artists, Andrea Barker and Xiaojing Yan. During the residency period, there will be studio visits wherein the community can interact with the artist and get a peek into the creation process.
We are excited to present to you our first-ever artist-in-residence, Hoda Farahani. Hoda Farahani is an emerging artist and designer, working primarily in digital art and fabrication. She received her Masters of Architecture from the University of Toronto in 2018, where she also worked as a designer in the fabrication lab and woodshop, working on a range of art installations and design projects. Over the past two years, she has been focusing more on art and architectural installation, looking for ways to combine her professional studies in architecture and her passion in art and installation. In this manner, she has been trying to develop an experimental design language that supports spatial, visual, and narrative ambiguity, which its effects highlight the conditional states that characterize subject, object, and image. As an emerging artist and architect, her attempt is to integrate the perceptual experience of space and theoretical architecture through poetry, into the creation of spatial art/installation which captures the ephemerality and eternality of space.
By Hoda Farahani, from left to right: Yoga House (2017), MA interactive installation (2018), Pulp it Up (2017), Multimedia Sculpture (2018), Donkey Shed in collaboration with Gareth Long (2019).