THE SHAPE I BECOME: Masks, Molds, and the Making of a Trainee | Yekta Sharafaddin-zadeh

“ ‘The Shape I Become’ is a series of three colored-pencil portraits on Bristol board, photographed under colored light to evoke red-blue 3D glasses. Two are the same drawing seen through different filters, the familiar self under blue light, the masked clinical self under red, while the third, in natural light, holds both at once. I had immigrated across an ocean once at ten, learning a new language and a new performance of belonging; at twenty-six, I crossed again, this time into the culture of medicine. The portraits attempt to make that second crossing visible, the watchful, self-editing attention of a newcomer; the way the white coat begins to wear you.”

Yekta Sharafaddin-zadeh is an Iranian-Canadian medical student in the Class of 2027 at the Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary. Before medicine, Sharafaddin-zadeh trained as a registered psychologist and earned an MSc in psychology, practicing as a therapist, researcher and lecturer. Her current creative inquiry sits at the intersection of cultural identity, professional identity formation and the body of the learner, exploring what it means to cross oceans, to wear a coat and to remain whole inside an institution.