Nahom Assefa is an Ethiopian-Canadian multidisciplinary artist, curator, and writer based in Toronto. His work explores belonging and identity through a deep curiosity about the world's cultures, histories, religions, mythologies, and the visual languages that are disappearing. He is a self-taught visual artist and a Business Administration graduate at Nova Scotia Community College. He draws on anthropology, cinema, design, and curatorial research to make work that is honest and culturally specific.

His work has been exhibited in Canada and internationally, including curating an exhibition, In Relation: Black Material Life and Memory on Mi'kma'ki at NSCAD Treaty Space Gallery, creating short animations, Funky  Barcelona Panot Tiles at OFFF Festival 2026 in Barcelona, and Landed to Takeoff at Nocturne Festival's NOISEmakers screened during the festival and at Emerging Lens Cultural Film Festival. He created an illustration for Halifax Public Libraries' 40th anniversary African Heritage Month, the North End Business Association’s 2026 Valentine's Day postcards, and has shown work at Dalhousie Art Gallery and Nova Scotia Community College.

As Founder and Creative Director of Cultured Creative Studio, he has worked with Lululemon, Halifax Public Libraries, Latispanica Cultural Association, Atlantic Flamenco, and the Canadian Centre for Diversity and Inclusion. He received a $5,000 Howl Experience Grant to organize Our Way Here, a workshop series designed to support and platform newcomer artists, earning a Certificate of Recognition from Canada Service Corps.

Beyond the studio, Nahom has interned as a curator at Dalhousie Art Gallery under Director Pamela Edmonds and sits on the board of the Creative Community Impact Association. He is the recipient of the 2025 NSCC Immigrant and International Student Experience IMPACT Award and served as a 2025 Atlantic International Film Festival Ambassador.

Curiosity is central to who I am. My work is a research-driven response to a question I keep returning to: what did we lose, and does anyone notice? This urgency guides my exploration of cultural memory, belonging, and identity. Themes shaped by a life spent between worlds, born in Malaysia, raised in Ethiopia, and now navigating Canada as a newcomer, learning to read a place that does not yet fully know me.

The work I make draws from deep immersion in the histories, mythologies, and visual languages of cultures the modern world is gradually leaving behind. Not because those cultures failed, but because they were never measured by the metrics that matter now. I research before I draw, tracing the griot tradition to understand the blues, studying azulejo tiles before rendering saudade, and learning salsa before illustrating Latin dance. My style adapts to each culture because specificity is how you honor rather than reduce, and it is the only honest response to the diversity of human expression.

When making a piece, I begin with research that feels closer to anthropology than art-making by gathering references, talking to the communities, reading histories, watching films, and listening to music, until the visual language becomes clear. The illustration, animation, and curatorial work that follows is built from within that culture, not imposed onto it. The result is work that holds cultural wisdom and grief in the same frame, inviting the viewer into a conversation rather than a lecture.

Art functions as a QR code to the soul; it carries understanding across differences without feeling indoctrinative and creates the conditions for empathy that argument alone rarely achieves. My work is for anyone who has ever felt between worlds, and for anyone who has not, but should.