Leila Refahi (persian: لیلا رفاهی) is a Toronto-based visual artist, researcher, and educator whose interdisciplinary practice explores the complex and often fragile relationship between humanity and nature. Working across painting, installation, and digital media, she investigates environmental and social impacts of climate change, centering themes of destruction, resilience, and renewal. Her practice reflects a layered understanding of ecological cycles and the cultural frameworks that shape our engagement with the natural world.
Originally from Iran and a member of the Indigenous Lur community, Leila’s lived experience profoundly informs her work. Growing up in a region where cultural identity was deeply tied to the land, she witnessed both the enduring significance of landscapes and the devastating effects of climate change and displacement. These personal and collective memories drive her exploration of belonging, loss, and the cyclical processes of environmental transformation.
Mythology, memory, and postcolonial environmentalism serve as core pillars of her practice. Drawing inspiration from Iranian cosmologies as well as theorists such as Carolyn Merchant and Donna Haraway, Leila challenges extractive and anthropocentric worldviews, advocating instead for narratives grounded in care, interdependence, and cultural resilience. Her recent projects reflect on the colonial impact on landscapes and emphasize the urgent need for climate justice and decolonial ecological thinking.
Materiality and symbolism are central to Leila’s visual language. Her layered, textured paintings evoke scorched yet regenerative landscapes, embedding memory and healing into their surfaces. Her installations often incorporate salvaged natural materials—tree fragments, soil, stone—creating immersive spaces that bridge the tangible and the ephemeral. Through video and digital work, she explores impermanence and the delicate balance between human constructs and environmental cycles.
She holds a Master’s degree in Art Education from Concordia University, as well as Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Painting from the Art University of Tehran. Her work has been exhibited internationally in Canada, Iran, Germany, Finland, and the United States. Leila has received recognition through numerous awards and grants from the Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council, and the Iranian Artists Forum. Her research-based art practice has been published in academic and arts platforms across Canada, Iran, and Finland.
Through her work, Leila invites reflection and open-ended engagement—bridging myth, science, and personal memory to inspire new ways of imagining our relationship with the environment and its enduring cycles of life, loss, and renewal.