Featured Artist for the Month of April, 2022
Website/work and Contact:
smilingleo73@yahoo.com
6479893884
www.hudasalha.com
www.instagram.com/huda_salha_artist
www.facebook.com/ArtistHudaSalha
It’s a matter of a Phone Call-film (7 min)
youtu.be/JgCWL6PzXLI
Memories at a Distance-Video Art (21 min)
youtu.be/xMgpBYgKPIM
After the Last Frontiers #1 (2 min)
youtu.be/jqa9oVetAE0
After the Last Frontiers#2 (These are Not the Keys) Sculpture. Installation. Time-Based (16 min)
youtu.be/dyMDSGMQrEY
Unmasked. Art Installation- Mixed Media (4 min)
youtu.be/W7BmR7L1bLk
Huda Salha
Artist Bio:
Huda Salha is a Palestinian Canadian multidisciplinary artist, author and researcher based in Toronto. She works with a variety of media including oil and acrylic painting, bronze casting, sculptural installations and film production/video art. Salha has participated in many art exhibitions, regionally and internationally. Her work explores the historical, cultural and psychological sense of place. She is interested in the way identity and memory are interwoven with place through political and cultural boundaries. Her current research is focused on cultural artifacts and oral histories as resistance and anticolonial critical pedagogy. She currently works as a graduate Research Assistant at the University of Toronto (UofT). She has worked as an art instructor and designer. Salha is a PhD student at UofT. She holds an MFA in Interdisciplinary Art Media and Design from OCAD University, a BFA Honors from York University, Toronto, a BA in English Literature from IUG, Gaza, in addition to a specialization in studio art from Athens School of Fine Arts. Her artworks were published in online galleries as well as several, magazines, newspapers, art books such as in The Big Art Book published by Scarborough Arts Council (SAC), 2017, 2019, 2020 & 2021. Salha received numerous awards. Her short film, It’s a Matter of a Phone Call was screened at the TPFF, 2019 and Internationally 2020. She serves on OISE Council of UofT and is a member of SAC, AGS, OISE Library Student Advisory Committee and the Research Ethic Board of OCADU.
My work addresses issues of identity, displacement, and memory. I am intrigued by the way identity and memory are interwoven with place through political and cultural boundaries. My visual narratives are informed by childhood memories, family anecdotes, and historical and geographical references. I have explored artworks and artifacts as sites of memory and knowledge producing pedagogical tools through art-based storytelling. Thus, I have argued against some claims that art is useless and cannot be a form of knowledge production. My current practice-based research explores decolonization and resistance through cultural production, storytelling, and critical pedagogies. It investigates the relationship material culture and artworks hold with place and identities; and the connection between bodies as makers and artworks as transmitters of bodily memories connected with place.
Using anti-oppressive framework, my work aims to shed light on dominant epistemologies and oppressions for social change, equity, and inclusivity. In an attempt to approach representations of self and the surrounding, I employ visual vocabulary and creative symbols as mnemonic devices drawn from lived experiences, ancestral heritage and culture. I have worked with various media, including oil and acrylic painting, bronze casting, sculptural installations, and film production.
Keys are dominant in the Palestinian collective memory and are a symbol encapsulating the lost homes and homeland and everything left behind. They carry emotional as well as legal value and are a national symbol of the Right of Return. Deformed by violence, the keys as artifacts are mnemonic devices connected to the displaced bodies. Their disfigurement is meant to disturb the colonial narrative and to highlight their non-materialistic significance. Additionally, such depiction suggests that the keys no longer hold functional values but are mere objects of memory that connect them to the past of their owners. The power of art is intertwined with storytelling and language to undermine dominant discourses. For instance, in These Are Not the Keys, 2020, the presence of the simulate keys indicates the absence of the real. The paradox in negating the presence of the simulate keys in display represents the absence of the homes that these keys reference as well as the absence of the Palestinians from their homes. Palestine is not dead. The absence of the real and the fact that it was erased and renamed on the map does not mean it does not exist in the memories of its warriors.
List of Awards, accomplishments
Have won several awards, including:
The Red Line Artworks global award for art for social change, 2019.
The Forget Me Not award from the Scarborough Art Guild, 2019.
Honourable Mention from the Scarborough Arts Council, 2019.
Palestinian Ministry of Culture first prize in a visual art, 2002.
Publications: Artworks have been published in online galleries, art books, magazines, book covers and calendars, most recently, the Red Line Artworks in the UK, 2019, Scarborough Art Council’s Big Art Books, 2017; 2020, 2021 Colors from Palestine–Resistance Art calendar in Toronto, 2021.
Films: My film, It’s a Matter of a Phone Call, (2018) was screened at Toronto Palestine Film Festival (TPFF)-TIFF Bell Lightbox, and internationally.
Forthcoming contributions: Book chapter in: “The Power of Oral Culture in Education: Theorizing Proverbs, Idioms and Folklore Tales”.
The Mourners
Acrylic on Canvas, 2017
48” × 36” (123 × 92 cm)
Waiting for The Unknown
Acrylic on Canvas, 2017
48” × 36” (123 × 92 cm)
Front Line
Oil on Canvas, 2017
36” × 36” (92 × 92 cm)
Silence/Dispossessed/Unsettled
Acrylic on Canvas, 2017
48” × 36” x 3 (123 × 92 cm x 3)
All That Remains Series
Wax & Racine. Dimensions Variable, 2019
Dimensions Variable
All That Remains Series
Bronze, Wax & Wire, 2019
Dimensions Variable
Perpetual
Oil on Canvas, 2017
36”× 36” (92 × 92 cm)
These Are NOT the Keys
Bronze, Iron and Aluminium, 2020
Dimensions Variable
Migrating Bodies
Acrylic on Canvas, 2017
36” × 36” (92 × 92 cm)
If you would like more information about a painting or the artist contact the artist directly through their contact information on this page or complete the form on the Contact Us page.
Copyright notice: The copyright for these artworks resides with the artist. It is illegal for these images to be reproduced in any way or by any means, in whole or in part, without the written permission of the artist.