Kimia Koochakzadeh-Yazdi

Vancouver, Canada

Kimia Koochakzadeh-Yazdi is an Iranian composer and performer. She writes for hybrid instrumental/electronic ensembles, creates electroacoustic and audiovisual works, builds instruments, and performs electronic music. She explores the unfamiliar familiar while being motivated by how melodies unfold through time; finding ways to play with various musical thresholds and exploring musical extremes is something that she is currently attracted to. Her work experiments with merging Iranian music with the more contemporary classical music aesthetics.

Being a cross-disciplinary artist, she has actively collaborated on projects evolving around dance, film, and theater. She is the co-founder and producer of Fashion x Electronics, a collective focused on creating interdisciplinary works based on fashion and electronic music.

Kimia’s work has been showcased by organizations across the globe and her work has been performed internationally at festivals including Ars Electronica, Festival Ecos Urbanos, Tehran Contemporary Sounds, Sonic Matter Festival, New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, Sound and Music Conference, and Modulus Festival, among others.

She holds a BFA in Music Composition from Simon Fraser University’s Interdisciplinary School for the Contemporary Arts. Kimia is currently based in San Francisco and is a doctorate candidate in Music Composition at Stanford University.

Saghi Ehteshamzadeh

Vancouver, Canada

Saghi Ehteshamzadeh (b. 1995, Tehran) is a queer interdisciplinary Vancouver-based artist/curator whose practice encompasses video art, live visual performances, new media, and art installations.

Holding a Bachelor of Cinema Studies from the Art University of Tehran and graduating from Capilano University’s Arts and Entertainment Management Program in North Vancouver, Saghi’s diverse artistic background informs their creative endeavours.

Saghi’s art practice draws inspiration from their personal experiences navigating disabilities and advocating for social justice, particularly within Iran and the ongoing struggle for wxmen’s equality. Their video practice is characterized by a unique blend of compressed, low-resolution imagery and pixel manipulation, and their live visuals feature a fusion of exotic retro videos alongside digital scans of nature and urban environments.

Beyond their artistic pursuits, Saghi has held positions such as the Exhibitions Manager at North Van Arts and Associate Curator at the Centre of International Contemporary Art (CICA) in Vancouver and currently serves as the Co-chair at VIVO Media Arts Centre’s board of directors.

Fashion x Electronics (FXE)

We are sisters, Kimia Koochakzadeh-Yazdi, a composer/performer, and Kayla Yazdi, a fashion and textile designer. FXE is a non-profit interdisciplinary collective and our mission is to merge our two worlds together by taking risks and experimenting. Simply put, we wanted to see what happens when music and fashion design converge. For each event we collaborate with a different team of creators to make it happen. Our goal is to build multi-sensory experiences for our community, and to bridge together a diverse range of disciplines.

Unheld II

In partnership with LIVE Biennale, Unheld II brings together Iranian artists Saghi Ehteshamzadeh and Kimia Koochakzadeh-Yazdi in an experimental audio-visual performance exploring dissociation, dislocation, and the quiet liberations that emerge at a distance from home. This event also features Saghi’s installation Holding On, a meditation on memory and depression built from incomplete scans of a single moment, and Pillow Talk by Fashion x Electronics (FXE), with seven haptic garment-based sound sculptures that turn fashion into interactive instruments. This programme moves between installation, performance, and wearable technology to ask how bodies, memories, and materials hold and transform experience.