Artists in residence

Carmen Amengual is an interdisciplinary artist, independent researcher, and filmmaker from Argentina based in Los Angeles. Through engagement with research, archives, literature, myths, and oral histories, her work examines the interstices and intersections between memory, biography, and history. Her projects encompass research, film, sculpture, painting, sound, text, and installation strategies to explore the emergence of collective imaginaries, identity formations, and conceptions of time and history that condition the political imagination.

Her works examine the way historical experience is transmitted intergenerationally, rearticulating (hi)stories of individual and collective resistance, and excavating their emancipatory potential. Her ongoing project, A Non-Coincidental Mirror, investigates a little-explored event in the cultural history of Global South solidarities: the First Third World Filmmakers Meeting in Algiers in 1973 and its second iteration in Buenos Aires in 1974 . The event served as a hub where self-identified “third-world” filmmakers discussed the role of cinema in anti-colonial struggles, made agreements, and strategised about how to produce and distribute films under dire political conditions. Based on an archive Amengual inherited from her mother—who collaborated with the organisers of the meetings—the artist embarked on a field investigation to follow the thread of these events as she looked to reimagine a failed documentary project that the organisers, together with the artist’s mother, attempted to make as part of the follow-up meeting in Argentina.

Amengual has presented her projects in various formats both nationally and internationally, with exhibitions at Smack Mellon (Brooklyn), Artist Space (New York), Human Resources and 2220 Art & Archives (Los Angeles), Table (Chicago), Biquini Wax EPS (Mexico City), and Museo Centenario (Buenos Aires). Her work has also been featured in conferences such as Film Undone: Elements for a Latent Cinema (Silent Green / Kino Arsenal, Berlin) and Film Act: Third Cinema and Its Legacies (American University in Cairo), and in screenings across the US and abroad . Amengual graduated in Comparative Literature from the University of Buenos Aires and holds an MFA in Visual Arts from the California Institute of the Arts. She is a 2021–2022 Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Studio Program fellow, a 2022–2024 Vera List Center for Art and Politics Fellow, a 2023 and 2024 Graham Foundation grantee, and a 2024 Creative Capital awardee.

Amir Amiri, born in Iran, is a musician who now lives in Quebec. In his native country, he devoted much of his youth to studying santour, a dulcimer with 72 struck strings. This instrument is at the heart of Persian classical music.

He also studied Indian classical music, notably with Ravi Shankar and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Although classically trained, Amir Amiri has always sought to explore the limits of his music, extending beyond traditional thinking.

Arriving in Canada in 1996, Amir Amiri found the opportunity to do so during a residency program at the Banff Centre for the Arts (Alberta), a haven of inspiration to which he has returned many times. While exploring the limits of his music, he found that there were none.

Amir Amiri has worked with Bob Becker, Edgar Meyer and David Takeno as well as jazz masters such as Hugh Fraser, Darcy Phillip Gray, Mike Murly, John Stetch and Bill Cahn. He has also collaborated with ensembles such as Constantinople and Pierre Lapointe. In addition, Amir Amiri has been involved in various projects as a percussionist, composer, music director and consultant for numerous dance and theater companies in Canada including Théâtre Sortie de Secours, Alexia Burger, Alberta Ballet, VIA Dance Ensemble, Lu Lu Dance Productions, Decidedly Jazz Danceworks, McDonald Wilson Dance Company, University of Calgary Dance Program, Banff Centre for the Arts Theatre Program, Manitoba Theatre for Young People and Vertigo Theatre in Alberta and Quebec.

In 2003, Amir Amiri was awarded the CBC Galaxie Rising Star Award as Artist of the Year.