Sustainable Textile Teach-in: Button Ornaments with Azadeh

Azadeh Monzavi is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher who lives in St. Catharines, Ontario. Azadeh is currently undertaking a Ph.D. in Communication and Culture at Toronto Metropolitan University. Her doctoral research and artistic praxis investigate intergenerational and transnational bonds between women, mediated through aesthetic and personal objects of significance drawn from the interconnected fields of textiles, craft, literature and art. Her work explores concepts of social justice, home, belonging, and identity within global contexts.  Through her research-creation, she interrogates the decolonizing potential of textile practices as a form of communicative media within broader and interrelated frameworks of intersectional feminist activism and visual culture.  

Material aspects of her process include upcycling used fabrics and clothing acquired from second-hand and thrift shops, and the Reuse Program at the Textile Museum of Canada.  She also has explored ‘found’ objects through social encounters with users/designers of textiles/clothing.  These materials enrich her work by interweaving narratives implied and/or hidden within previously used textile traces and remnants with themes drawn from her own personal and political consciousness and reflective research practices.