NARMIN KASSAM
Location:
Ottawa, ON, Canada
ARTIST BIO
Canadian mixed-media artist Narmin Kassam creates layered collage works on wood panels exploring women’s empowerment, cultural identity, and intergenerational memory. Combining handmade paper and paint, her practice weaves personal narrative with themes of resilience, belonging, and shared heritage.
Her work has been exhibited across Canada and internationally, including the Roundhouse Centre in Vancouver, Surrey Art Gallery, ModernFuel Gallery in Kingston, Summer & Grace Gallery in Oakville, Warnes Contemporary in New York, and the Chicago O’Hanlon Center for the Arts. Kassam has presented solo exhibitions with Sfumato Art Creatives and the Women United Art Movement, and her collaborative public murals are on view in Ottawa, Toronto, and Calgary.
Her work has been featured in numerous international publications. Kassam was a finalist for the 2025 Women United Art Prize and is an Exhibiting Member of the Federation of Canadian Artists.
ARTIST STATEMENT
With One Voice continues my exploration of resilience, belonging, and the bonds that connect women across generations. Working in mixed-media collage on wood panels, I layer handmade papers from Japan, India, and other regions with paint to create surfaces that hold memory, touch, and cultural presence.
Rooted in my experience as an African-born South Asian woman and former refugee, these works draw from inherited strength and stories carried through bodies, gestures, and textiles. Figures merge and lean into one another, reflecting identity as shared rather than singular. Pattern, skin, and material become metaphors for lived complexity and collective care.
The women in this series do not claim space through volume. Their power lies in presence, tenderness, and connection, shaped by history and by one another.
