Roya Akbari is a Tkaronto-based artist who works with film and video installation.

 

Growing up in Tehran, Iran, Akbari started her artistic practice as a photographer. A first-generation settler immigrant, Akbari completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design and a Master of Visual Studies in Studio Art (MFA) at the University of Toronto. Akbari is currently a PhD candidate in the Film and Media Department at Queen’s University and her research-creation draws on resonances between diaspora studies, decolonial feminism, activism, and recent turns in both archive and media studies. Akbari’s moving image practice is research based, and comprises different forms of writing, narration, and archival footage. Rooted in experimental documentary and engaging epistolary forms that evoke embodied diasporic experiences, Akbari’s work activates memories and histories that are in flux. Akbari’s work has been exhibited at artist-run centres and galleries such as Centre A, 221A, Whippersnapper Gallery, University of Toronto Art Centre, and Centre 3, and screened at festivals internationally, including TIFF Cinematheque in Toronto, Edinburgh International Film Festival, and Oberhausen International Short Film Festival.

Akbari’s work is distributed by Vtape.