Iranian and Afghan artists participating were asked to share and digitally manipulate photographs from their personal archives at Niagara Falls alongside family and chosen family. All works are mixed media, using digital manipulations to complicate relationships with “home” and the nostalgia associated with Niagara Falls as a place for affirming our (Iranian and Afghan migrant/refugee) belonging in Canada. Zahra Rajabi is a product designer fascinated by what constitutes belonging in the digital world. Rajabi pairs images of popular Canadian landmarks alongside family photographs in Afghanistan to think through the ways that “home is (re)created through art”. Ferozan Nasiri is an Afghan community organizer and educator interested in the ways that members of the Afghan diaspora use different modes and mediums to theorize, articulate, and represent their lived experiences locally and globally – especially through storytelling. Nasiri uses Afghan textiles as the backdrop of her work to evoke a feeling of familiarity for Afghan audiences engaging with her work. Through her artist statement Nasiri pays tribute to complicated relationships to belonging which are “as complex and non-linear as our distinct experiences with migration.” Melika Hashemi is a multidisciplinary artist whose projects are informed by her social and pedagogical concerns regarding marginality and resistance (and grounded by her hyphenated experiences with Iran and Canada). Through works such as Ayeneh Kari (2019), Hashemi transforms her family photographs at Niagara Falls into (digital) traditional Persian mirror handiwork. Swarm is an anonymous street artist based inTiohtià:ke (Montreal) and whose primary medium is wheatpaste and graffiti. Swarm’s artistic contribution included a digital manipulation of the Canadian flag, hung upside down to signal the distress and urgency surrounding Canada’s contribution toclimate change via settler colonialist resource extraction that has been ongoing since the first waves of colonization.

The collaboration between Afghan and Iranian artists grew organically as we already shared space in our movements against islamphobia, against sexism, against racism, and against other structural conditions which shape our lives and the lives of those we love. More specifically, we shared space in our movements against sanctions (which are mostly discussed in relation to the flow of Iranian products but) which restrict the mobility and livelihoods of people first and foremost including for Afghan people. While cultural and linguistic commonalities acted as a starting point for our collaborative project, we attempted to ensure that we centred our own entry points rather than flattening or conflating Afghan and Iranian experiences especially because we all held different relationships to migration, class, faith, and shadeism. The significance of Niagara Falls for new immigrant and migrant communities is not limited to Afghan and Iranian diasporas however we centred what we know to strengthen our work and ensure we were only speaking from lived experiences.

Note: this question is hard to answer without placing blame/shame on community members who are often doing their best in the face of overt racism, microagressions, delayed visa/immigration applications, etc. but anti-Blackness, anti-Indigeniety, and attachments to neoliberal notions of productivity (rooted in racial capitalism and property rights facilitated through theft of Indigenous land) continue to be prevalent in our respective diasporas. A lot of artistic practice also continues to think through the “٣rd space” that first and second generation Iranian and Afghan people navigate without asking: “what are the limits of making claims for belonging on stolen land?” We are invested in questioning how diasporic claims for static and grounded relationships to place are harmful in reproducing notions of time as linear and more broadly, assimilating into the white settler state which isn’t broken but rather built to operate at the expense of Black, Indigenous, and racialized people. In producing her works, Ferozan Nasiri notes that she thought about an imaginary thread between her family photographs and ijaza (consent) in relation to the land. She insists that consent is a part of a dialogue that should have a place in the collective consciousness of the Afghan diaspora, especially as “we navigate, recreate, and speak on different spaces of belonging here.” While we are concerned about the lack of discussions around settler colonialism and anti-Blackness in Iranian and Afghan communities, we are indebted to the mobilizing happening across Turtle Island by platforms including (but most definitely not limited to) Canadian Roots Exchange, Diaspora Express, and LAL .

Melika Hashemi draws from The Audre Lorde Questionnaire to Oneself (1980) to grapple with the limits of language and feelings of unbelonging which we do not always yet have the words for. Diaspora Express makes conversations on home-making and settler colonialism accessible by asking its members “what brought us to this land and what can we do in solidarity with rightful owners of this land?” While many Iranian politicians stand by a Prime Minister who has continuously failed to seek Indigenous peoples consultation and who upholds a history of land grabbing by the Canadian nation-state (including through pipeline expansions and tar sands extraction), we look towards futurities beyond surface level representation and towards honouring treaties and enacting different ways of inhabiting and most importantly, sharing space for ourselves and the generations to come.

In short, the most concrete piece which inspired this exhibit is the photographs that each of us have at Niagara Falls and the complicated relationship to home that we continue to think through/carve out.

Meet Iris Deng, a fourth-year student at the University of Toronto and good friend of the Centre for Community Partnerships (CCP). Her involvement at the CCP has been an integrated part of her University of Toronto life; from volunteering to writing and graphic design, Iris has been involved with the CCP in various roles and perspectives. Iris’ involvement began during her first year of study for February 2017’s Alternative Reading Week, and she has since pursued other volunteer and work-study positions.

“It was my first year. I was living in res, and I saw the poster. It said: ‘What are you doing during reading week? Consider Alternative Reading Week!’ I was intrigued,” says Iris.

Alternative Reading Week is an annual volunteering experience organized by the Centre for Community Partnerships in which students spend three days working on various projects with local community organizations. Iris spent her first Alternative Reading Week with the Innovation Hub. “The Innovation Hub is a student-led initiative that collaborates with partners in the university community to research and ideate innovative strategies for improving the campus experience” (Innovation Hub).

The following year, Iris was inspired to rejoin Alternative Reading Week as a project leader, collaborating with students on a mural for ArtHeart at Daniels Spectrum. “A community cultural hub, Daniel’s Spectrum is home to several art-based communities such as ArtHeart, whose mission is to build self-esteem and self-reliance for children, youth, adults, and families in the Regent Park community” (ArtHeart Community Art Centre). In addition to her interest in psychology and economics, her two majors, Iris also has a passion for visual arts and design: “I draw portraits, photo-realistic drawings, and in recent years, comics and graphics too”. Along with her contributions as a project leader for Alternative Reading Week at ArtHeart, Iris has also applied her technical art skills through comics for the University of Toronto’s “The Varsity” and her work-study positions at the CCP. During her second and third years at the University of Toronto, Iris worked in the CCP work-study position of Communications and Promotions.

(Left) Iris (5th from the right) and her teammates in front of the 2018 ArtHeart Mural created during Alternative Reading Week. (Right) A sketch of Iris’ ‘lovely squad’ during the 2018 Alternative Reading Week.

During her second year of study (and first work-study period), Iris also worked for Student Life’s blog, representing the CCP and writing alongside other U of T divisions. She proposed formatting her blog posts as comics with blurbs, making the comics the emphasis of her posts: “I got to incorporate my artistic skills. I got tired of writing so I asked: “Can I draw instead?”

Comics from Iris’ Student Life blog.

Henceforth blogging for Student Life through comics, Iris blogged in a personal and unique style. For her CCP position, she undertook numerous projects that allowed her to apply her graphic design and illustration skills, including poster and t-shirt designs. For one such project, she illustrated for the CCP’s children book “Bloom’s Community Garden”, of which 70 copies were printed.

“It was hard balancing everything. I was working at the CCP, and that made me want to be more involved in the events that they held. I had to attend them and blog about my experiences for my Student Life blogger position, which I really enjoyed. I was glad to incorporate my artistic skills.”

Illustrations by Iris from “Bloom’s Community Garden”.

During her third year, Iris was a photographer for Alternative Reading Week and delivered a public speech during its orientation. She also continued in her role as Communications and Promotions Assistant at the CCP. Through the variety of roles she has assumed at the CCP, Iris has gained skills from digital art to writing, blogging, and even public speaking. “In a work-study position, you aren’t limited. Your skills come up and that’s what you can bring to the table. I guess I brought artistic skills. From there you learn even more. Being involved has helped me grow in many ways. …  I made some opportunities happen and some just happened to me! CCP was a starting point and I jumped to different places, like Student Life and University of Toronto Student Union (UTSU), but I always came back because there’s always more I can learn.”.

Now in her fourth year of study, Iris continues to be involved with the CCP. She plans to finish her Bachelor’s degree in 2020 and pursue a career in communications, design, or marketing. “I don’t want to limit myself to these fields though”, says Iris. Additionally, she plans to further pursue her visual arts skills through formal training and practice. “I’d love to have a stall at an art exhibition or show, or sell my art.” Check out her Instagram page to see more of her amazing work, or click here to see her illustrations for the Varsity!

Drawings from Iris’ Instagram page.

Works Cited

We are a team of graduate students from the Translational Research Program at the University of Toronto. Thanks to the funds provided by the Center for Community Partnerships, we were able to complete our capstone project, titled “Primary Stroke Prevention: Comparison of Information Sharing Preferences of At-risk Patients with Family Physicians’ Practices”. The overarching framework for this capstone project used the translational thinking design, which consists of two phases: problem exploration phase and translation phase. This is a key conceptual framework for translational researchers to define the problem in the context of the needs of the people and design a project that can have an impact in the community. While the goal for our capstone project was to complete the exploration phase, the translation phase was left to be conducted post-masters.
As part of our exploration and to help conclude this phase of the translational thinking framework education, we conducted a mixed methods study. It was during this part of the capstone project that we used the funds provided by the Center for Community Partnerships, for which we are very thankful. For this study, we recruited 14 at-risk patients (e.g. hypertension, dyslipidemia, atrial fibrillation), 5 stroke survivors and 13 family physicians.

We used quantitative (surveys) and qualitative (focus groups/interviews) methods to address three main questions:
– What is the current stroke literacy?
– What are the barriers to effective preventing counselling?
– What types of communication strategies would be perceived to be effective for promoting education of primary stroke prevention?

The results of our study indicate limitations in the literacy of stroke survivors and at-risk patients, and limitations in the abilities of family physicians in managing stroke risk factors and stroke prevention. Primarily, we found that there is a large gap between family physicians’ education on primary stroke prevention to their patients in comparison with patients’ perceptions. Top barriers to primary prevention from the family physician’s perspective include the lack of time, funding, prioritization of unhealthy lifestyles, team-based solutions, convenient and effective risk assessment tools, guideline-based physician education, and coherent patient education materials.
During the next part of the project we plan to use the information gathered during this exploration phase and develop translational prototypes in partnership with the three stakeholders to improve patient education and self-empowerment in stroke prevention. Also, we are certain that our research will serve as a stepping stone for other researchers interested in generating tangible solutions for people in the community.
Once again, we would like to express our gratitude to the Centre for Community Partnerships at the University of Toronto. The completion of our research project would not have been possible without their incredible support!

Click here learn more about our Community-Engaged Initiatives Grant