Counting Petals 2023

Title: Counting Petals
Year: 2023
Medium: Experimental Animation - Projection mapping on wall
Venue: Aga Khan Museum, Toronto, Ontario

Counting Petals is a 2-minute non-linear experimental animation exploring themes of flora and their relationship with numbers, and geometric shapes. The animation will begin with a focus on geometric shapes and math principles, such as the Fibonacci series.
These shapes will gradually transform into organic forms inspired by nature using an animation technique called morphing - the brush strokes will stretch and reshape into one another and flow across the composition of the building façade (tailored to the brief and projection surface). To depict this transformation, I will incorporate fluid brush strokes inspired by Chinese landscape paintings and calligraphy. The practicing and repeating of these brush strokes in the animation production will become my personal reflection of my cultural identity, while the morph, expressive mark-making and fluid motion aims to explore the ever-evolving definition of cultural artwork.

The flowers blossom to the rhythm of the music and the animation is specifically designed for this venue space.

This project features live footage from the 2023 Light Up The Dark event in which animations created by OCAD University students are projected on the Aga Khan Museum’s façade on three consecutive nights in December. OCAD University Students and recent graduates worked in collaboration with the Museum and Shezad Dawood to create these animations which were inspired by the Museum Collections and current exhibition, Shezad Dawood: Night in the Garden of Love, Inspired by and Featuring Yusef Lateef and set to music by Yusef Lateef.