Emelina Soares

Emelina Soares uses site-specific installation, animation, projection, drawing, printmaking and sculpture to navigate themes of ecology, ethology, migration, and cultural exchanges. Her experience as an Indian, born and raised in Qatar hearing stories about her grandfather’s relationship with Portugal due to the colonization of Goa, India, has informed her curiosity with history and the present. Her time spent in Canada as a graduate student has opened new interests such as the experience of a visitor on indigenous lands along with the learning of ancestral knowledge gathered by the aboriginal communities. This provided the opportunity to engage with the mycology community and expand her research on the kin relationships between botany and mycelium, an organism that shares a similar DNA structure to humans. Her passion for art also allowed her to explore the role of an artist-in-residence facilitator for the Vancouver International Sculpture Biennale and is now in the process of constructing her very own residency facility in the heart of Pune, India. Soares has collaborated with physicists at TRIUMF, Canada’s national particle accelerator center to innovate interdisciplinary pedagogies using materials and methods that study the perception of dark matter. She continues to explore the relationships of patterns present within matter as she develops her teaching and research practice. She recently, completed her MA degree in Museum and Gallery Practices at the University College of London, Qatar, and MFA degree at Emily Carr University of Art and Design.