By: Isabella Nicastro, Curation and Artist Liaison at Partial
As part of our ongoing commitment to highlight the incredible talent within the Partial community and from coast-to-coast, Partial’s second 2026 homepage banner spotlight features artists Shahrzad Amin and Ernesto Cabral.
Shahrzad Amin is an Iranian-Canadian award-winning interdisciplinary artist with more than twelve years of diverse experiences as a sculptor, multimedia and installation artist, model designer, and potter. She obtained a BFA from Tehran University of Art in 2010 and an MFA from OCADU in 2020.
Shahrzhad creates socially engaging art interested in fundamental social issues of democracy. Her work examines of diasporic and socio-cultural subjectivities, often applying historical eastern architectural visual elements to encourage the bridging of both physical and cultural distances.
3″ x 11.7″ x 3″. Currently available for purchase here.
7.1″ x 5.8″ x 7.1″. Currently available for purchase here.
7.1″ x 12.6″ x 3.8″. Currently available for purchase here.
Shahrzad’s collection of sculptural works titled Witnesses is inspired by the Tell Asmar Hoard, a collection of twelve statues unearthed in 1933 in Iraq that are famous for their wide eyes, captivating gaze, and their sense of humble attentiveness. Minimalistic, yet entirely captivating, the pristinely simple design of her sculptures instantly draws viewers to the figures’ enthrallingly emotive facial expressions.
To learn more about Cabral and his artwork, check out his Partial profile here.
Ernesto Cabral de Luna is a Mexican lens-based artist working in Toronto. Ernesto received his BFA in photography from OCAD University in 2024, where he received the 2024 Barbara Astman Photography Award and the 2021 Wendy Coburn Art and Social Change Scholarship. A recipient of the 2024 Gallery44 Residency Award and the 2024 Partners in Art’s Artist-Direct Grant, Ernesto has exhibited at Patel Brown, Ignite Gallery, Ada Slaight, Xpace Cultural Center, and Abbozzo Gallery.
A unique take on creating mixtures of analog and digital photographic processes, much of Ernesto’s artwork is a visual cumulation of laborious experimental techniques with sculpture and installation, printing onto unconventional and manipulated surfaces to emphasize the multi-dimensionality and materiality of the image. With many of his pieces exploring the intersection of nostalgia and belonging, there is a lingering question of what it means to engage with a cultural space between the precipice of being both an observer and an outsider.
His sculptural work centers around altering perception through image manipulation, providing new ways to experience recognizable imagery in unconventional manners outside of their intended purpose. Fragmented and jagged with sharp edges and harsh lines, memories are spliced and strewn back together with a methodical precision and hyper-attentive detail, altering images in the same way that the passing of time manipulates and erodes these fragments of photographic recollection. In Cabral’s sculptures, once-clear images now serve as a visual reminder of endless alternative histories being formed as the mind slowly loses its ability to hold on to these once-distinct memories.