Bio

Dorsa Sarvi is a multidisciplinary artist and fourth-year Visual Studies student at the University of Toronto. Her work, which spans oil painting, analogue photography, and installation, conveys a deep sensitivity to the nuanced dynamics of belonging, loss, and renewal. Informed by her Persian heritage and experiences of migration, Dorsa’s art navigates the ways physical and emotional landscapes shape our sense of self, often focusing on spaces where stability meets transformation.

Artist Statement

What Remains Becomes is a mixed media installation that examines the body’s dissolution, not as an end, but as a process of integration. Through a circular triptych, the human figure is rendered in stages of decay—its anatomical structures unraveling and merging with botanical forms. This transformation erodes the boundary between body and environment, positioning the figure as material in flux.

The circular format is central to the work’s meaning. It reflects the cycle of life and death, where matter does not disappear but shifts states. The spatial layout invites movement around the panels, reinforcing the idea that transformation unfolds over time and from multiple perspectives. The body is not presented as whole or preserved, but as something returning gradually into the world. By aestheticizing decomposition, the work questions whether beauty allows for a deeper confrontation with mortality, or if it risks distancing us from it. The detailed anatomical imagery, juxtaposed with delicate flora, holds this tension in place—never fully resolved.

Natural materials such as tree branches and dried flowers extend the painted figure into its environment. Their presence introduces a shift in scale—linking the intimate, internal landscape of the figure to wider cycles of organic life. The body is no longer self-contained, but positioned within a system that extends beyond the human.

Death is not framed as an absence, but as a reconfiguration of matter and meaning. The body becomes a threshold—something porous and transitional—marking the point where the individual dissolves and is re-situated within larger ecological and temporal systems.