Cultured Pallets: CDMX

During my residency at Casa Lü Sur in Mexico City, I collected ornamental designs from various sources including artifacts in museums, pop culture in the city, artisan markets, etc. and created multiple decorated pallets for new site-specific transient installations in my Cultured Pallets series as well as other works. I use shipping pallets to embody and facilitate the notion of cultural translation by returning to the etymological roots of translation as “carrying or bringing across.” In these installations, the decorated pallets metaphorically serve as objects of holding: “bearers of culture” that continuously circulate across peoples and cultures. As a result, my work evokes issues of migration as people, ultimately, function as “bearers” and “translators” of culture in our current globalized state. Cultured Pallets: CDMX exhibition is the culmination of my work in this residency.

"Cultured Pallets: Medallion on wooden chest", mixed media on wooden shipping pallet, 30in x 30in x 4in, 2025

Left: "Cultured Pallets: Turtle Dove", mixed media on wooden shipping pallet, 30in x 30in x 5in, 2025 Right: "Cultured Pallets: William Morris at Casa Lü Sur", acrylic on wooden shipping pallets, approx. 60in x 30in x 36in (each pallet 30in x 30in x 5in), 2025

"Cultured Pallets: William Morris at Casa Lü Sur", acrylic on wooden shipping pallets, approx. 60in x 30in x 36in (each pallet 30in x 30in x 5in), 2025

Cultured Pallets: CDMX, installation view

Cultured Pallets: CDMX, installation view

"CDMX Ducks", collected objects, 2025

"Birds of Mexico", mixed media, 8.5x11 in, 2025

"Birds of Mexico", detail, mixed media, 8.5x11 in, 2025

"CDMX Patterns on Plates", mixed media on Ikea posters, 16x20 in, 2025

"Bird Plates", hand cut Ikea posters, 11.5x11.5 in, 2025

"Bird Plates", hand cut Ikea posters, 11.5x11.5 in, 2025

"Bird Plates", hand cut Ikea posters, 11.5x11.5 in, 2025

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CURRENT EXHIBITION

Are We T[here] Yet?

solo exhibition
curated by Niku Koochak

July 17- September 21

opening reception: Thursday July 17th, 5-9 pm; Artist talk: 8:00-8:30 pm

Art Windsor-Essex
Windsor, ON

ARE WE T[HERE] YET?  asks whether stories can ever truly be finished, or if they are always in a process of retelling, reinventing, and reinterpretation. This exhibition doesn’t ask the viewer to identify what is “real,” but instead invites reflection: How does meaning form? Is it in the object? The touch? The story? Or simply the gaze?

Imagine a love story told a hundred years ago, in a land far from here, within a culture unfamiliar to your own. That story inspires the creation of a handmade bowl, a carved ornament, a painted plate, or perhaps a ceramic bird. Over time, the story fades, but the object remains. Or maybe just part of the lone bird survives the shard with a painted flower. 

That fragment travels. It is copied, collected, and reimagined. It enters new hands and new places, adopted by other cultures who reinterpret its form for beauty, for curiosity, or for commerce. Its meaning drifts. Eventually, its origin may become unclear or even forgotten. We see this in blue-and-white ceramics replicated across centuries, or floral motifs that pass between continents, shifting in meaning as they move.

Soheila Esfahani’s work explores this transformation. Being there and here. ARE WE T[HERE] YET? brings together ceramic birds, painted plates, and sculptural elements some handmade, others factory-produced or collected over time. These objects occupy a space between authenticity and adaptation, challenging our impulse to trace things back to a singular, fixed origin.

As an Iranian Canadian artist based in Waterloo, Ontario, Esfahani investigates how cultural forms change through translation, migration, and reproduction. Her practice draws on both handmade and mass-produced objects, placing them in conversation to examine how meaning is shaped and reshaped.

Esfahani’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the Aga Khan Museum (Toronto), the Canadian Cultural Centre (Paris), and the Canadian Museum of Immigration (Halifax), and is held in collections such as the Canada Council Art Bank. She currently teaches at Western University and is a member of Toronto’s Red Head Gallery.

UPCOMING EXHIBITION

The Seeker & the Search

solo Exhibition

August 29-November 16, 2025

Richmond Hill Public Library Glass Case Gallery Richmond Hill, ON

The Seeker & The Search is a response to the following verses by Rumi: I’m weary of beast and devil, a man is my desire. They said, “It is not to be found, we too have searched.” He answered, “What is not to be found is my desire.” Starting with the original Persian script in this body of work, the calligraphy moves towards abstraction, so that the language is obscured into rhythm with only fragments of words showing here and there. Text is extended even as it is deconstructed into mystery and texture. The hidden or background stands out as foreground, and the original lines of script move into spaces in-between which further emphasize the concept of unattainable; “not to be found”. These works are a record of Esfahani’s search; a map of her quest for “what cannot be found.”

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