In Leila Zelli’s studio | The Iranian bird that found its wings again

Born in Tehran and a Quebecer for 20 years, Leila Zelli is one of the rising stars of Canadian contemporary art, creating committed works in support of Iranian women’s struggles. This fall, she is exhibiting at the Toronto Biennale, the Galerie de l’UQAM and the Art Toronto fair. We met her in her studio in Plateau-Mont-Royal.

A fighter

With her sparkling eyes and curly hair, she looks like an angel. But behind Leila Zelli’s affable smile, there is the determination of a fighter passionate about freedom. Her motto is “woman life freedom”, the slogan launched in September 2022 in reaction to the death of Mahsa Amini, killed in police custody in Tehran after opposing the mandatory wearing of the hijab. Last week, even though she was in Toronto preparing for her participation in the biennial (which begins this Saturday), Leila demonstrated to mark the two-year anniversary of this tragic death.

“My work is political,” she says. “As an artist, it’s important to take a stand.”

She thus made an animated film, About Dam and Hofitwhich tells the story of a friendship between an Iranian mountain (near Leila’s childhood home) and an Israeli military plane. Quite a subject when you know the tensions between the two countries. The film, shown in a dozen festivals, was also created with the Israeli artist Gali Blay, whom she met in 2018 at the Baie-Saint-Paul International Contemporary Art Symposium.

“We wanted to illustrate the forbidden friendship between an Iranian and an Israeli woman and the freedom to criticize our respective countries. Being born in Iran does not mean that you support the Iranian regime. Being born in Israel does not mean that you support the Israeli government either.”

Leila Zelli also became known with The replacement (The Substitute), a video made in 2019 at the Saputo stadium with the French artist Guillaume Pascale. A tribute to the Iranian Sahar Khodayari, who set herself on fire after being accused of wanting to attend a soccer match disguised as a man. We see Leila from behind, wearing a headscarf, motionless for an hour and a half in the stands. Evoking the determination of Iranian women who sometimes write their wills before going to demonstrate their resistance to the power of the mullahs…

Activist Leila Zelli was not particularly pleased with a poster recently placed in Montreal City Hall in which the only woman depicted was wearing a veil. “I would like to create another poster to represent the diversity of Montreal women,” she said, adding that if there had been eight women without a veil and one veiled, she would have been less upset. “We need to tell Muslim women who arrive here that they have all the freedom in the world, including the freedom to remove their veil.”

His career

Aged 43, Leila Zelli has loved fighting since the age of 2! A karate teacher, her father taught her this martial art that forged her character. She obtained her black belt at 10 years old! As she was gifted at drawing, her parents enrolled her in adult classes… at the age of 8. At 14, she joined an art school before going to university. “I did my first exhibitions at my grandmother’s house,” says the artist who studied at university in very particular conditions. “The teachers were anti-power and brought us photos of Robert Mapplethorpe or Diane Arbus. There were classes with nude models, but in secret. If it is known, you can buy silence. Everything is purchasable in Iran.”

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She arrived in Quebec in 2003. “The Islamic Republic doesn’t prevent people from leaving the country, quite the opposite,” she says. From 2004 to 2011, she studied graphic design and learned French and English. Then she enrolled at UQAM, where she obtained her bachelor’s degree (2015) and master’s degree (2020). Eclipseher first work created in Quebec, during her baccalaureate, is a tribute to the victims decapitated by the Islamic State group. She presented it in 2015 at the Galerie de l’UQAM. “A significant work in my career for which I received my first prize.”

Watch the video

In 2016, she produced Off-screena video of bombings in Syria that look like fireworks. A false fairy tale that evokes “the beautiful light that fell from the sky” when, as a young girl, she witnessed bombings during the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988).

Watch the video

Since exhibiting at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) in 2019, Leila Zelli has focused on the struggle of Iranian women. “The media, especially television, often depicts them wearing a black chador. It revolts me! I want to show their courage, walking with their phones to document what they experience on a daily basis, including violence.” To do this, she makes videos using images taken from the internet.

The workshop

Since the beginning of the year, Leila Zelli has had her studio in a condo owned by collectors Danielle Lysaught and Paul Hamelin. The founders of the Projet Casa space were touched by her work exhibited last year in their gallery. “They offered to let me set up here to save me long bus rides,” she says. “They are really very kind.”

The 2023 winner of the Lynne Cohen Prize from the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (MNBAQ) benefits from beautiful light in this space that she can filter to engrave. She decided to take up sculpture. We were able to admire her drawings of Amazons, which she will convert into a fiberglass sculpture for an exhibition at her gallery owner Pierre-François Ouellette scheduled for 2026. The models of Amazons come from photos of an Iranian woman playing with a ball as well as ancient bas-reliefs.

Where to see his works?

Since September 6, Leila Zelli has been part of the exhibition False folds by assumptions curated by Louise Déry and Marie-Hélène Leblanc at the Galerie de l’UQAM. She presents Why should I stop?two videos launched by the gallery virtually during the pandemic. They show Iranian women protesting the decision of clerics to ban them from practicing Varzesh-e bastani, an ancient exercise reserved for men, in public.

These videos are also presented at the Toronto Biennale, where the artist also made an intervention on a wall with a print that shows an Iranian woman haranguing the crowd to demand more rights. Until October 31, we can also admire five photographs taken fromAbout Dam and Hofit on the facade of the Mathieu bath (2915, rue Ontario Est, in Montreal).

His works can be found in the collections of the MBAM, the MAC, the MNBAQ, the Pointe-à-Callière Museum, the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, the Musée d’art contemporain de Baie-Saint-Paul and Hydro-Québec. The magazine Chatelaine revealed in August that Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly had recently acquired one of his prints.

Hoping to one day make public art, Leila Zelli looks to the future with optimism, even if she still harbors a little fear in her mind, “because there are Iranian agents” in Canada, she says. “I’ve been told that they know what I’m doing, so I can’t say that I’m not afraid. Courage is not not being afraid, but it’s being afraid and continuing to create despite everything, drawing inspiration from life’s opportunities and current events. I’m happy here. I’m an Iranian bird that has found its wings again in Quebec.”

Visit the artist’s website

Some creations

Here are some of Leila Zelli’s works over the years

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