Due to conditions with the COVID-19 outbreak, the IGNITE Book club: Annahid Dashtgard in conversation with Shirin Eshghi proceeded as scheduled on March 12 but without a public audience. The conversation was captured in order for anyone interested to hear Dashtgard speak about her book, Breaking the Ocean: A Memoir of Race, Rebellion, and Reconciliation.
You can view this conversation HERE.
Organized by the UBC Equity & Inclusion Office, IGNITE Book Club is designed with and for racialized faculty to allow for the exploration and discussion of memoirs written by renowned racialized authors. Check out more information HERE.
L to R: Sadaf Ahmadbeigi, Annahid Dashtgard, Shirin Eshghi Furuzawa
The talk was meant to be followed by a reception with performances to celebrate Nowruz, the Persian New Year. Although the performances were also cancelled due to Covid-19 concerns, Sadaf Ahmadbeigi, our ARL Mosaic Intern, was still able to mount a display featuring a haft-seen spread to celebrate Nowruz. The Haft-Seen (Seven “S”s) is an arrangement of seven symbolic items whose names start with the 15th letter in the Persian alphabet that correspond to S in English. As you see in our display, these items are as follow:
Sabzeh (سبزه) – wheat, barley, mung bean, or lentil sprouts grown in a dish which symbolizes rebirth and growth
Samanu (سمنو) – wheat germ sweet pudding, symbolizing power and strength
Senjed (سنجد) – Persian olive, symbolizing love
Serkeh (سرکه) – vinegar symbolizing patience
Seeb (سیب) – apple, symbolizing beauty
Seer (سیر) – garlic, symbolizing health
Somāq (سماق) – sumac, symbolizing sunrise
The spread is traditionally set up with a mirror as a symbol for self-reflection, coloured eggs, symbolizing fertility, candles to bring light to our lives, and books, especially poetry books symbolizing wisdom and tradition.
Nowruz celebrations start at the exact moment of spring equinox, and conclude 13 days afterwards. Today marks the final day of the New Year celebrations, and it is customary to throw away the Sabzeh, the sprout that we have grown over the past two weeks. It has special significance this year in the context of Covid-19, as the belief is that the Sabzeh will have collected all the sickness, pain, and suffering of the past and of what may still lie ahead. Throwing the Sabzeh away reflects a wish to start afresh.
Mr. Yim Tse (謝琰), Chinese Librarian (1968-1999), passed away on March 16, 2018. Asian Library has set up a book display at the Asian Centre entrance in memory of this pioneer librarian and friend.
Summoning the Senses is a multi-media exhibit inspired by eighteen months of academic exchange and personal travels throughout India which aims to incite curiosity, encourage adventure, and bring vibrancy to winter’s wetness using sculpture, paintings, textiles, and unique modification of space with miscellanea. The heart of the display, an optically illusory mosaic sculpture made with thousands of spice seeds, has a mesmerizing allure rooted in the structure of mandalas and is centrally painted with Islamic geometric techniques. In the context of a wanderer’s eye passing through the kaleidoscopic Indian subcontinent, the exhibition ornately explores its diversity, the significance of the environment as it pertains to shaping agriculture and culture, and attempts to capture the dynamic process of learning and understanding through an abundance of senses.
A recent graduate of UBC’s Asian Area Studies program, Amy Ebrahimian has nurtured a passion for visual arts alongside her education and is thrilled to be sharing her work with the students, staff, and visitors of the Asian Centre. Of German-Ukrainian heritage and raised in both the United States and Canada, her family has been on the move for several generations and the wandering rootlessness she has maintained has taken her across continents while studying (perhaps why it took a little more than eight years to complete her Bachelor’s degree). Her artistic practice is guided by a desire to cultivate and communicate an understanding of nature that can both expand the observer’s respect for its value and their motivation for its protection. Her process is a balance of free-flowing and systematic unfolding to depict natural elements, symbiotic relationships, and cycles in terms that are honest and relatable with a hint of the mystical. Joyfully compelled, she produces pieces in realistic, impressionistic, and abstract styles using scenery from firsthand encounters and dreams. Enlivened by the act of telling detailed stories and (un)tangling concepts, much of her current work features intricate arrangements of minutiae integrated with intense colour palettes into oil and acrylic, and is accented by a topographic maze of textures that tempts the eye into exploration.
Summoning the Senses is a multi-media exhibit inspired by eighteen months of academic exchange and personal travels throughout India which aims to incite curiosity, encourage adventure, and bring vibrancy to winter’s wetness using sculpture, paintings, textiles, and unique modification of space with miscellanea. The heart of the display, an optically illusory mosaic sculpture made with thousands of spice seeds, has a mesmerizing allure rooted in the structure of mandalas and is centrally painted with Islamic geometric techniques. In the context of a wanderer’s eye passing through the kaleidoscopic Indian subcontinent, the exhibition ornately explores its diversity, the significance of the environment as it pertains to shaping agriculture and culture, and attempts to capture the dynamic process of learning and understanding through an abundance of senses.
A recent graduate of UBC’s Asian Area Studies program, Amy Ebrahimian has nurtured a passion for visual arts alongside her education and is thrilled to be sharing her work with the students, staff, and visitors of the Asian Centre. Of German-Ukrainian heritage and raised in both the United States and Canada, her family has been on the move for several generations and the wandering rootlessness she has maintained has taken her across continents while studying (perhaps why it took a little more than eight years to complete her Bachelor’s degree). Her artistic practice is guided by a desire to cultivate and communicate an understanding of nature that can both expand the observer’s respect for its value and their motivation for its protection. Her process is a balance of free-flowing and systematic unfolding to depict natural elements, symbiotic relationships, and cycles in terms that are honest and relatable with a hint of the mystical. Joyfully compelled, she produces pieces in realistic, impressionistic, and abstract styles using scenery from firsthand encounters and dreams. Enlivened by the act of telling detailed stories and (un)tangling concepts, much of her current work features intricate arrangements of minutiae integrated with intense colour palettes into oil and acrylic, and is accented by a topographic maze of textures that tempts the eye into exploration.