Narmin Kassam
Artist based in Canada
ABOUT
Canadian artist Narmin Kassam explores themes of women’s empowerment, gender equality, and cultural diversity. Through her layered technique, which involves weaving paint and paper on wood panels, she expresses feminine strength, inclusion, and the richness of cultural identity.
Kassam’s work has been exhibited widely across Canada and internationally, including at the Roundhouse Centre, Vancouver (2022), Surrey Art Gallery (2023), Summer & Grace Gallery, Oakville (2025), ModernFuel Gallery, Kingston (2025), Chicago O’Hanlon Center for the Arts (2025) and Warnes Contemporary Gallery, New York (2025). She has also been featured in solo shows with Sfumato Art Creatives (2025) and Women United Art Movement (2025), as well as in group exhibitions with the Women in Arts Network (2025). Collaborative public murals she has led appear in Ottawa, Toronto, and Calgary.
Her work has been featured in several international publications, including Art Seen Magazine, New Visionary Magazine, Artsin Square Magazine, Al-Tiba9, Artany Magazine, Visual Art Journal, and the Arts to Hearts Project: 100 Emerging Artists of 2024. In 2024, she was longlisted for the Women United Art Prize in the Collage and Fibre Art category.
Artist Statement
With One Voice is a continuation of my “Beautiful Voice” series that pays tribute to the silent strength, resilience, and sacred connection shared by women across generations. This series continues my exploration of layered identities through mixed-media collage on wood panels, using richly textured handmade paper from Japan, India, and other regions, layered with paint. Each composition honours women who carry memory in their bodies, stories on their faces, and futures in their arms.
Rooted in my own experience as an African-born South Asian woman and former refugee, these works emerge from a deep well of inherited strength and intergenerational memory. They reflect resilience passed down not just through words, but through gestures, textures, and presence.
The figures dissolve into one another in soft unison. Garments suggest cultural heritage and recognition. Layered skin tones and collaged patterns reflect the complexity of women’s lives and identities. The interplay of paint and paper, light and colour, creates a tactile intimacy, inviting the viewer into each figure’s quiet world.
The women in these paintings do not speak loudly, but they resonate with quiet force. “With One Voice” reflects a shared rhythm, a collective hum shaped by layered histories and intertwined lives. It is not volume but presence that empowers. In their closeness, arms linked, bodies leaned in, eyes gently closed, each woman is lifted by her own resilience and by the grace of those beside her. This quiet strength restores dignity, affirms identity, and opens space for healing.
Website: www.narminkassamart.com
Instagram: @narminkassamart