Sylvia Safdie: TERRA
Sylvia Safdie: TERRA examines the decades-long career of Montreal-based artist Sylvia Safdie through a selection of her paintings, sculpture and videos.
Safdie often explores themes of memory, dislocation and the passage of time in her work. Drawing inspiration from the natural world, the artist has spent a lifetime gathering organic and human-made materials, resulting in her reflections on the relationship between nature and culture throughout her practice.
Nature’s raw materials, when combined by the artist in unexpected ways, assume potent symbolic, anthropomorphic and transfigurative connotations. Among these substances, earth – terra – is the most primal and enduring of materials in Safdie’s artist palette.
This exhibition presents more than a dozen artworks spanning the last five decades of the artist’s career, highlighting key sculptures and paintings as well as selections from her experimental video practice. Subtle and absorbing, these examples from her oeuvre reveal her enduring fascination with both the material and ephemeral aspects of life on Earth, our shared home.
Date
Location
Contemporary Galleries B107, B109
Artwork
Sylvia Safdie, Heads (detail), 1993–2021. Stone, steel, bronze, wax, 13 × 360 × 182 cm. Courtesy of the artist. © Sylvia Safdie. Photo: Richard-Max Tremblay
Sylvia Safdie, Heads (detail), 1993–2021. Stone, steel, bronze, wax, 13 × 360 × 182 cm. Courtesy of the artist. © Sylvia Safdie. Photo: Richard-Max Tremblay
Sylvia Safdie, Feet (detail), 1992–2021. Stone, steel, glass, bronze, 16 × 360 × 200 cm. Courtesy of the artist. © Sylvia Safdie. Photo: Richard-Max Tremblay
Sylvia Safdie, Feet (detail), 1992–2021. Stone, steel, glass, bronze, 16 × 360 × 200 cm. Courtesy of the artist. © Sylvia Safdie. Photo: Richard-Max Tremblay
Sylvia Safdie, Luna No. 1 (video still), 2024. Silent HD video, black and white, filmed by Sylvia Safdie and edited by Gabrielle Allain and Sylvia Safdie, 6 min 1 s. Courtesy of the artist. © Sylvia Safdie. Photo: Courtesy of the artist
Sylvia Safdie, Luna No. 1 (video still), 2024. Silent HD video, black and white, filmed by Sylvia Safdie and edited by Gabrielle Allain and Sylvia Safdie, 6 min 1 s. Courtesy of the artist. © Sylvia Safdie. Photo: Courtesy of the artist
Sylvia Safdie, Heads Series IV, No. 5, 2010. Earth, graphite, oil on Mylar, 206 × 107 cm. Courtesy of the artist. © Sylvia Safdie. Photo: Richard-Max Tremblay
Sylvia Safdie, Heads Series IV, No. 5, 2010. Earth, graphite, oil on Mylar, 206 × 107 cm. Courtesy of the artist. © Sylvia Safdie. Photo: Richard-Max Tremblay
Sylvia Safdie, Assemblages II (detail), 1986–2025. Steel, bronze, stone, glass, organic materials, Ciment Fondu, paper, 236 × 538 × 46 cm. Courtesy of the artist. © Sylvia Safdie. Photo: Richard-Max Tremblay
Sylvia Safdie, Assemblages II (detail), 1986–2025. Steel, bronze, stone, glass, organic materials, Ciment Fondu, paper, 236 × 538 × 46 cm. Courtesy of the artist. © Sylvia Safdie. Photo: Richard-Max Tremblay
Sylvia Safdie, Earth Marks Series XVIII, No. 2 (detail), 2002–2020. Earth, graphite, oil on Mylar, 238 × 107 cm. Courtesy of the artist. © Sylvia Safdie. Photo: Richard-Max Tremblay
Sylvia Safdie, Earth Marks Series XVIII, No. 2 (detail), 2002–2020. Earth, graphite, oil on Mylar, 238 × 107 cm. Courtesy of the artist. © Sylvia Safdie. Photo: Richard-Max Tremblay
Biography
Born in Aley, Lebanon, in 1942, Sylvia Safdie spent her youth in Haifa, Israel, before moving to Canada with her family in 1953. Since she obtained a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Concordia University in 1975. Her work has been widely exhibited both nationally and internationally, with recent group and solo exhibitions at Fonderie Darling, Montreal (2021); Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (2017); Musée des beaux arts de Montréal (2014); Prefix, Toronto (2014); and the MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina (2011). Safdie has received numerous grants and awards, including the Thomas More Institute (1991) and the Saidye Bronfman Arts Centre Gallery at the First Biennale des Artistes Québécois (1977). Her work was also the subject of Earth Marks, a 2000 documentary directed by Doina Harap. Safdie is represented by Paul Kuhn Gallery in Calgary.
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Accessibility and
Sensory Guide
Sylvia Safdie: TERRA is on Level 1 in galleries B107 and B109. Visitors may access the exhibition from the Indigenous and Canadian Galleries and from the Lower Contemporary galleries. Wheelchairs and other walking supports are available at the Box Office. The exhibition spaces have three doorless access and exit points. The rotunda is nearby, as are the cafeteria and public washrooms. Security staff are available to help with directions or to provide information.
In the exhibition, the artworks are displayed on walls, on the floor, on shelves, on a table-height platform, or hanging from the ceiling. The lighting is standard and even in gallery B107. In gallery B109, two video artworks are projected onto the walls. Both are silent. The lighting in gallery B109 is dim. None of the works may be touched. Some artworks are equipped with proximity alarms that may be triggered if you get too close. There are benches in gallery B109 where visitors may sit and rest.
Learn more about Accessibility at the Gallery here.