Naimah Amin is a painter and educator based in
Montréal, QC.
They are a recent MFA graduate from Emily Carr University of Art + Design in Vancouver, BC. They hold a BFA from Concordia University, Montréal, QC, in Painting & Drawing.
© Perrin Grauer
Their MFA was supported by SSHRC and FRQSC scholarships, and during their studies they received the 2025 Audain Travel Award as well as a Mitacs BSI Award for their work as an artist-researcher with the Empire of Dirt Residency (Creston, BC). Previously a Teaching Fellow in the Foundations Department at Emily Carr University, they are an aspiring educator in painting focused on bridging the critical connections between the studio, contemporary art and the politics of aesthetic experience. They have worked with and for numerous artistic institutions and research communities across Canada, including the Musée d’art contemporain (MAC) de Montréal, the Independent Media Arts Alliance (IMAA), Artexte, and the Ethnocultural Art History Research Centre (EAHR). Their experience as a Québécoise and the child of Bangladeshi immigrants remains an important point of reference across their work as an artist, educator and cultural worker.
Amin’s studio practice explores the generative, perhaps latent, potential of beauty, seeking to access the sublime through the historically marginalized and ostensibly frivolous genre of floral painting. Engaging urban botany from the perspective of the pedestrian, Amin approaches the everyday as a critical site through which painting functions as an inquiry into the political genealogies of image-making. Through colour and clichés, they seek to mobilize an urban visual commons—a shared visual language sedimented through repetition, belonging to no single author and sustained through common use. Their work invites us to dream through the quotidian, seeking an aesthetic attunement towards the not-yet in service of political action.
Most recent group exhibitions
In Puddles and Ripples: MFA Thesis Exhibition, March 28 to April 9, 2026. MOEC Galleries, 520 E 1st Ave, Vancouver, BC V5T 0H2
MFA 2026 State of Practice Exhibition, September 18 to October 12, 2025. MOEC Galleries, 520 E 1st Ave, Vancouver, BC V5T 0H2
Dwelling(s), curated by Luigi Pulido, Florence-Ariel Tremblay, and Jennifer Wood. March 5 to 12, 2025.
MOEC Galleries, 520 E 1st Ave, Vancouver, BC V5T 0H2
Most recent curatorial project
Takātuf: From Salish Seas to Palestine, curated with Maliv Khondaker and Quin Sluzalek. August 2 to 29, 2025.
Vancouver Black Library and Centre A Gallery, 268 Keefer St, Vancouver, BC V6A 1X5
Community organizing
Wretched of the Moon/Damné·es de la lune, with Wawa Li and Faith Paré, a Montréal artist collective fostering solidarity with prisoners through letter-writing and political education initiatives for abolitionist justice.
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