Image: Sylvia Safdie, Heads (detail), 1993–2021. Stone, steel, bronze, wax. Courtesy of the artist. © Sylvia Safdie. Photo: Richard-Max Tremblay
"Sylvia Safdie: TERRA," the National Gallery of Canada's survey of the Montreal-based artist, enters its final weeks in the Contemporary Galleries in Ottawa and closes on October 25, 2026. On view since December 2025, the exhibition brings together more than a dozen paintings, sculptures and videos from the past five decades of her career.
Born in Aley, Lebanon, in 1942, Safdie spent her youth in Haifa before moving to Canada in 1953, and she completed a BFA at Concordia University in 1975. According to the gallery, her work returns again and again to memory, displacement and the passing of time. Over a lifetime she has collected natural and man-made materials, and the way she brings them together reflects on the relationship between nature and culture. Combined in unexpected ways, these raw substances take on symbolic, human-like and transformative meanings. Earth, the "terra" of the title, is the most basic and lasting of them.
Several large sculptures are included. "Heads" (1993–2021) combines stone, steel, bronze and wax and measures 360 by 182 centimetres, while "Feet" (1992–2021) brings together stone, steel, glass and bronze at a similar size. "Assemblages II" (1986–2025), dated across nearly four decades, joins steel, bronze, stone, glass, organic material, Ciment Fondu and paper in a work 538 centimetres wide.
Earth also appears as a drawing material. "Heads Series IV, No. 5" (2010) and "Earth Marks Series XVIII, No. 2" (2002–2020) are tall works on Mylar made with earth, graphite and oil. The exhibition also includes examples of Safdie's experimental video, among them "Luna No. 1" (2024), a silent black-and-white HD film running just over six minutes.
The gallery describes the selection as quiet and absorbing, showing a lasting interest in both the physical and the fleeting sides of life on Earth.
