Born in Tabriz in 1978, Kambiz Sharif is an Iranian-Canadian artist who now lives and works in Vancouver, Canada. His extensive art background allows him to use various technical processes and materials throughout his practice including wood, clay, bronze, model making and other forms of casting – all done as a generally self-educated artist.
Sharif employs methods of reduction and notions symbolism in his process as a strategy for expressing personal feelings and confronting the difficulties of life. His recent works are the outcome of his critical approach to various socio-cultural conditions of a world that tries to cast people in predetermined identities and stereotypes.
His most recent sculpture, Need, was installed in downtown, Vancouver during the summer of 2020. Although its form is abstract, the piece holds deep personal meaning for Sharif. It’s an artistic manifestation of the immigration journey faced by millions not just in Vancouver, but all around the world.
Need can be best understood through the words of Kambiz Sharif, himself.
NEED
The immigrant is in search of a place that, in many cases, is tied to his/her dreams. For me, the most important point of immigration is the possibility of movement from an imposed geography to a new land. To establish a life based on re-imagination: security, peace and stability. It is a place where one can combine what one already has with his/her wishes to reach an expected satisfaction. However, separation from one’s motherland to form a new history in unexplored territory is like a simultaneous experience of sweetness and bitterness.
All immigrants have real and imaginary stories about migration and their identity. These stories are sometimes told and other times, like my story, they are concealed to appear in the form of a sculpture. That is, the process of forming a sculpture, from idea to execution, becomes a medium for revealing subjective conceptions (for myself) and others who observe it. It shows how this self-imposed challenge leads to the creation of a new work of art.
The idea for the first sculpture in Vancouver came to my mind in 2009 while I immigrated to Canada. I was in search of security and shelter, in the process of understanding this new culture and becoming more confident with my communication. With it revealed a bronze sculpture which I called Need. In fact, Need, for me, is the purest interpretation of the moods of that time. Even the passage of time could not have any impact on the quality of our relations. In a concise description: three abstract fingers are represented who demand something from their surrounding environment. They are like seedlings, sprouting out of soil or wood beams of a shelter that are resisting the ups and downs of life, but they still have desires. The palm of the hand, like a world of memories and experiences, locks up traces of the past in its soft body, like a fleshy spherical mirror that reflects what belongs to the present time.
Need – weighing 1200kg and measuring 5m tall, is made of 48 casted pieces, telling the untold and unknown desires of myself and other immigrants. I chose bronze as the material. It is a hard object with a soft, mirror-like appearance that can – for a moment – register and then turn back into its environment, such as what one sees in the juncture of Jervis, Melville and Pender Streets. Exactly like having eye contact between a passerby, anybody – depending on one’s point of view – may experience the reflection of self in their surrounding environment.
In this way, Need was made for people who have experienced different histories, creating a concurrent private and public world in which time and place are not ignored but play a critical role together. In a private space, the sculpture reflects the unrecognizable, unsayable aspects of the observer’s subjectivity. The sculpture, like a homogenous and reflective figure, inspires a behaviour that has a bodily dimension and is correlated to the observer’s experience from this self-reflection.
In this case, the significance of this work is dependent on the interaction between Need and the body of the observer. Its form is redefined with each encounter. But this interaction, through the presence of people, goes beyond the personal; any bodily gesture has the vision of the “other” in itself. Therefore, the sculpture is always in dialogue with different bodies and simultaneously represents the concept of need, creating a ground in which all intervening, present factors (including the environment and others) interact with each other as a symbiotic body. The work of art would always feel the desire and presence of the “other.”
The Need is purchased in 2015 and housed as a permanent collection of the Davis Museum in Boston.
Need
Dimensions: 11’-6”x 5’-2” x 17’
( 3.50 x 1.60 x 5.10 m)
Medium: Bronze
Location: Intersection of Melville, Pender, and
Jervis Streets, Vancouver
