Erfan Rezazadeh and Saghar Parham

L’AMOUR Fashion, 2021

HAWIN is a minimalistic streetwear lifestyle label based in Toronto. HAWIN means summer in Kurdish and our goal at HAWIN is to habituate the new and old Persian communities with hypebeast culture. By mixing and matching different references with the help of our designers, our products vary from different styles and cultures. We seek to create unique minimalistic street wear apparel, inspired from a Persian approach. Although designed with Persian culture in mind our work is the perfect combination of many cultures. Some designs depict Greece sculptures wearing Persian patterned clothes, showing every design in HAWIN is full of history. This piece represents the idea that “the eyes are the ocean of the soul” (Luffina Lourduraj). Named L’Amour representing French for “Love”.

About Erfan & Saghar

Erfan and Saghar are a couple in their early twenties who immigrated to Canada in 2018 from Iran. Erfan is an architecture student, with a passion in fashion and sales, who was a graduate of Royal Crown Academic School and Saghar is currently in high school student. HAWIN launched in early 2020 with a focus on designing something both Persian and Canadian. They both love design and being an independent business with Saghar handling the design aspect and Erfan running the day to day business needs.

Jing Liu

The Sunflower Girl, 2021

For the Sunflower, the inspiration was from my younger sister Xiao Xiao. The character’s prototype reference is my sister when she was 5 years old. The drawing records a special moment of her on the day we visited a private sunflower field. She is 13 years old now and I wish she can always be as happy as that day in the fields.

About Jing

Jing is an 18-year-old high school student at Royal Crown Academic School. She was born and raised in China but has been studying and residing in Toronto while she applies to the animation program at Sheridan College this year, in hopes of following her life long dream making characters come alive. She use an application Procreate to create most of her drawings, and reckons digital drawing is the best way to create arts because it is so versatile, does not require to purchase paints on a regular basis and she can erase anything easily.

Hasty Rayramesh

Mania, 2021

Mania is a series of eye paintings, as the name suggests each eye represents a mood or emotion each of us have experienced many times in our lives. I strongly believe in the saying “eyes never lie” you can always catch a glimpse of one’s true emotions through their eyes no matter how hard they try to hide it.

About Hasty

Hasty is a Persian painter and poem writer located in Toronto as a graduate from Royal Crown Academic School. She uses art as a form of self-expression and considers each of her works as a personal piece. As an artist her main goal is to incorporate human emotions in each painting allowing the viewer to awaken a feeling as they observe each piece.

Francine Freeman

Jotunheimen Bliss, 2021

When arriving in Norway we ask for directions to Jotunheimen National Park to start our hike at the Besseggen Ridge. Finishing the direction help from a local Norwegian with “but make sure you check the avalanche reports” and not even prepared for snow we head to check it out. As apparently the park is usually closed this time of year, the parking lot empty and no one in sight, we contemplated the hike for an hour deciding in “you only live once.” So we placed a note on our rental car in case we didn’t return in a couple days to come look for us and we headed up the mountain. With weather conditions from cloudy - snow – rain - hail to bone chilling, the sound of the water flowing beneath the snow, we decide to rest for the night. Although night didn’t quite exist this time of year with the midnight sun, a time when the sun never truly sets through the night. Waking in only hours, from the cold shooting through our sleeping bags, my husband gets up first, quickly returning to the tent with excitement, “Fran you’ve gotta take a look at this.” I exit the tent that faced the mountainside, turning around to the most jaw dropping scene of this panoramic fjord, with the most majestic rainbow from the mist that had just passed. In this moment, nothing mattered. The truly dreadful night before, became this incredible moment making it all worthwhile. For once I just wanted to stop and take in the moment, along with a quick photo before the rainbow soon disappeared. Today I got to experience how the world can truly ground you in the moment!

About Francine

Francine’s exploration started in Mississauga, Ontario with a focus on local landscape painting. After, completing her Masters in Visual Arts at Griffith University in Australia, her focus shifted to international landscapes, all photographed by herself and then documented with her light application of oil paints and vivid colors, as a way to relive the moments and share her memories. Over the last few years she has travelled extensively exploring the beauty of 15 countries and painting from photos taken along her travels. When Francine isn’t traveling or painting, she is teaching full time as the Media and Visual arts teacher for Royal Crown Academic School in hopes to help others find their passion and tap into their creativity. The work displayed within this show are her students. A great deal of her course content explores taking the art out of the classroom and into the community; doing art therapy for seniors, creating community murals and student designed screen printed t-shirts to march in the Climate Strike each year in Downtown Toronto. She hopes to help others find their passion and tap into their creativity.

https://www.francinefreeman.com