BEHIND THE POSTER
Meet the Artist:
NEGAR POOYA
Negar Pooya is an Iranian-Canadian multidisciplinary visual artist whose work explores memory, identity, belonging, migration, women’s experiences and our relationship with place and nature. Working across photography, painting, collage and mixed media, she often brings together fragments of different times and cultures to create layered visual narratives.
For the 24th Female Eye Film Festival, Pooya created the campaign artwork in response to this year’s theme, Interconnectivity.
THE STORY BEHIND THE POSTER
“When I first heard the theme Interconnectivity, I immediately thought of an ancient image from Iran that has always stayed with me.”
The inspiration comes from a ceramic vessel fragment from Tepe Sialk, near Kashan, Iran, dating to around 4000 BCE. Its stylized figures appear side by side, connected through their extended arms. Despite being thousands of years old, the image still carries a remarkably contemporary message about human connection, community and belonging.
Pooya used the ancient figures as the foundation for the festival artwork, preserving their distinctive rhythm and connected forms while transforming them through contemporary collage.
Within the bodies, she introduced fragmented faces of women from different cultural backgrounds. The faces are intentionally incomplete, layered with distressed textures and organic elements rather than presented as perfect portraits. Each woman remains individual, yet becomes part of a larger connected whole.
For Pooya, this layering reflects the complexity of identity itself. We carry our histories, memories, cultures and experiences within us, while continuously being shaped by our relationships with others.
The poster creates a visual connection between ancient and contemporary, Iran and Canada, past and present, individuality and community.
At its centre is a simple idea that has survived for thousands of years: we are stronger, richer and more complete through our connections with one another.
For the Female Eye Film Festival, where women come together through film, art, conversation and storytelling, this ancient gesture of connection becomes a contemporary celebration of women standing together.
