Samira Banihashemi is an electronics-based performer, installation artist, and sound designer based in Vancouver. Working with found and archival sound, sampling, and modular synthesis, they create narratives between vague truth and imaginative fiction. Improvisation is central to their practice, with the modular synthesizer as their main instrument.
Drawing on their chemical engineering background, Samira uses the ways we name, categorize, and explain natural phenomena as starting points for narrative. Their work explores feedback, physical resonance, and the relationship between sound and material.
Life between Iran and Canada shapes their attention to the gap between Canada’s narratives of inclusion and the realities of immigration. Responding to the polite avoidance of those realities, they make work whose meanings shift with each listener’s memories, cultural knowledge, and lived experience.
Their collaborative practice values playfulness, shared discovery, and exchange over hierarchy. Their current interests include responsive instruments, spatial sound, and collective listening.
Samira is completing a BFA in Music and Sound at Simon Fraser University and holds a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering and a Theatre Production diploma from Humber College.
Since 2020, Samira has designed sound for experimental and mainstream theatre productions. They are currently the Technical Director and Stage Manager for Corpus Dance Projects’ touring production, with over 100 performances across Canada and internationally in the past three years. Their work was featured at the Prague Quadrennial 2023 as part of the Canadian National Exhibition presented by the Associated Designers of Canada.