Fonds P0277 - Leila Sujir fonds

Leila Sujir is an artist and associate professor at Concordia University, Department of Studio Arts in the Intermedia (Video, Performance, Electronic Arts) area. She was born June 19, 1951, in Hyderabad, India and moved to Canada as a child. She first studied English Literature at the University of Alberta and graduated in 1972 (BA). Later, at the graduate level, University of Calgary, she studied post-colonial and postmodern theory with Canadian cultural theorists and writers Robert Kroetsch (1979-1980) and Eli Mandel (1984-1985).

As an artist Leila Sujir has been building up a body of video artworks exploring such themes as memory, migration, family history and culture with digs into archival materials. Her projects involve video installations, interactive video projections and, mainly from 2013, the making of 3D stereoscopic (anaglyph) works. Leila Sujir’s video art works have been shown in group shows at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Tate Gallery in Liverpool, England as well as galleries and festivals all over the world. Her works are in collections, including the National Gallery of Canada (four video artworks), the Glenbow (two video art installations and one video artwork), the University of Lethbridge Art Gallery (one video art installation), and numerous library collections.

Leila Sujir joined Concordia University in 1998. In 2005-2006, she was a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the University of Calgary, a one-year research position as an artist in the Interactions Lab in the Department of Computer Science. She received a three-year Social Sciences Humanities Research grant, “Exploring Elastic 3D Spaces: Bodies and Belonging” (2016-2019). She has been the Chair of the Department of Studio Arts at Concordia since 2017.