With exhibitions in Calgary, Los Angeles, Toronto, and at Vancouver’s newly launched Medias Res Gallery, all in the month of April, Afghan-Canadian artist Hangama Amiri is on a roll.

Spanning the fourth floor of a new building in Vancouver’s Railtown neighbourhood, Medias Res is an exciting programming hub for Vancouver’s Iranian Visual Arts (VIVA) Alliance. The gallery aims to serve as a platform for intercultural exchange among diverse communities – especially visual artists who are new to the city – “to share their work and connect with the local community.”

Amiri’s inaugural exhibition, Henna Night II / Shabe Kheena II, opened on March 27th. Through a series of eight intricate textile wall hangings (or textile tableaux) the artist invites us into a traditional Afghan pre-wedding ceremony: a henna night. Here, the bride’s female friends and family gather in the home to adorn the bride’s hands with henna in a joyous celebration. Amiri’s works offer viewers a glimpse into the private realm – a shared meal, stacks of dishes from cooking, portraits of women and loved ones – evoking notions around home, identity, and belonging.

Amiri, who studied painting, combines portraiture and still life techniques with her textile skillset, learned from her family. Her mother taught her how to sew and she spent much time as a young child in her uncle’s fabric shop in Kabul where, as curator Maryam Babaei describes, “the soundtrack of her life was the sounds of scissors and sewing machines.”

For the first six years of her life, Amiri lived in Afghanistan. In 1996, when the Taliban seized power, Amiri and her family were forced to flee their country, subsequently living as refugees in Pakistan, Iran, and Tajikistan, before settling in Canada in 2005. During a recent tour of Henna Night II / Shabe Kheena II, Babaei said that “during this time, Amiri kept sewing as a way to keep her connection to home, to piece together memories from home, and to create a sense of control, cohesion, and continuity in her life.” While Amiri focused on painting throughout university, earning a BFA from NSCAD University in Halifax and an MFA from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut (where the artist currently lives), it was not until grad school that she started using fabric in her practice, for its functionality and tactility.

Composed through a laborious process of stitching together fabrics collected from numerous places she’s lived over time, Amiri creates stories that honour Afghan women both in Afghanistan and in the diaspora – a goal throughout her practice. She uses a variety of materials, each with their unique texture, opacity, and pattern; like chiffon, muslin, cotton, denim, polyester, and vinyl. At times, she paints directly onto the fabric or uses inkjet-printed pieces to introduce photographs, postcards, and other imagery into the works.

In The Bride (2025), a work made specifically for this exhibition, the artist depicts a scene with women gathering around the titular subject. The women, however, appear isolated. “There are signs of the precariousness of the circumstances of these women,” Babaei explained. In the exhibition text, she elaborates: “Amiri reflects on Afghan women’s dichotomous relationship to domestic spaces, which are simultaneously sites of confinement and the only place where they can exercise their agency and express themselves freely.” In other works, we see these small gestures of self-expression through things like jewellery and painted nails.

Fabric is a constant presence in our daily life. For Amiri, visibly frayed edges and exposed seams reveal the artist’s process of piecing together disparate fabrics — or memories — into a cohesive whole.

Hear more about Amiri’s practice and artworks herself at a virtual artist talk on Saturday, April 19th at 3pm at Medias Res Gallery. Henna Night II / Shabe Kheena II is on view until Friday, May 2nd, 2025. Gallery hours are Tuesday to Friday, from 11am-6pm. RSVP here. DETAILS.

Media Res Gallery

Neighbourhood: Railtown Japantown

401-353 Railway St.

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