Walter Phillips Gallery, Satellite Space
Eric Harvie Theatre, West Lobby
In shadows of the individual is rooted in questioning the contemporary role of the political group, and how it can begin to emerge from the shadow of the political individual: a figure of power who overrules the presence of the group. This line of questioning requires a reimagining of what a political group desires, and a reformulation of the hierarchical and exclusionary perceptions used in constructing and maintaining political power within a state or national context. Its title partially borrowed from political philosopher Jodi Dean’s recent text, Crowds and Party, this exhibition finds dissatisfaction in contemporary criticism of group politics, instead approaching the idea of the political group through a more elementary arrangement: the family.
The history of the family is one founded upon labour, and particularly the immaterial labour of women. There are innumerable iterations of collectiveness and care within the construct of the normative and non-normative family, each with the potential to inform alternative modes of considering the structure and sensibility of the political group. Now widely recognized as an entity with political dimensions, the concept of family is taken up by the three filmic works in the exhibition. Employing structures of episodic documentary, non-linear narrative short and cinema, the works might be understood in relation to Stefano Harney and Fred Moten’s theorization of the hapticality.[1] Each speaks to the aptitude of film for exploring the lived contexts of what Harney and Moten understand as a “refused sentiment, history and home” to build towards a shared “philosophy of feeling” for one another.[2] Positing that these open narratives hold potential for a wider conversation about political desire that does not exclude the subject of feeling, the exhibition aims to provide points of reflection for how the political group might be reimagined with a renewed capacity to respond to the power of the few.
[1] Stefano Harney and Fred Moten, The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study (Brooklyn: Autonomedia, 2013), 97-99.
[2] Ibid.
Image 1: Richelle Bear Hat, film still from In Her Care (2017). Commissioned by Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity.
Image 2-4: Installation view, In shadows of the individual, Eric Harvie Theatre, 2017. Photo credit: Krista Belle.
An upcoming project co-curated with Natasha Chaykowski, to be presented online in 2018.
Image courtesy the Alberta Foundation for the Arts
Art Gallery of Guelph
Bringing together cross-generational artists – Sara Cwynar (New York, NY); Hannah Doerksen (Calgary, AB); Deborah Edmeades (New York, NY/ Vancouver, BC); Faye HeavyShield (Blood Reserve, Alberta); and Lucy Tasseor Tutsweetok (d. 2012, Arviat, Nunavut) – each offers a contemporary perspective on the traditional “cabinet of curiosities,” complicating historical approaches to the use and display of objects. With collections that activate history, culture, and the land itself in their explorations of the politics of display, the artists highlight how these systems – and “curiosities” themselves – can also be powerful sources of alternative narratives. At once deeply personal and inherently political, the exhibition draws attention to collecting as a method of making, proposing strategies to destabilize and create new forms of knowledge.
All images courtesy the Art Gallery of Guelph
grunt gallery, vancouver
Trinity Square Video, Toronto
aka artist-run, Saskatoon
ARCTICNOISE is an immersive, audio and visual media installation by Geronimo Inutiq (madeskimo). Following a series of discussions in Montreal and Toronto, Inutiq and co-curators Britt Gallpen and Yasmin Nurming-Por began a process of collective research into the relationships among Glenn Gould’s representations and more contemporaneous representations of the North, as well as the role of technology in disseminating these identity-based constructions.
Links:
Images courtesy Trinity Square Video
Collingwood waterfront
At Sea presented a series of archival images from the Town of Collingwood's archive projected on to the former grain elevators.
Diaz Contemporary, Toronto
Diaz Contemporary is pleased to present BLIND WHITE, an exhibition of six national and international artists: Jen Aitken, Abbas Akhavan, Aude Pariset, Nicolas Sassoon, Rachelle Sawatsky and Mark Soo. Invited to respond to the intersection of technology and the phenomenology of light, each selected artist approaches these concerns through differing material practices. Central to the works of each artist selected for the exhibition are the role of technology, science, obsolescence, consumer culture, labour and tracing the void. As an exhibition, BLIND WHITE proposes an oscillation between scientific or technological senses of knowing and philosophical or spiritual senses of understanding, that suggest a rhizomatic form of looking.
Adjunct programming includes an event with Rachelle Sawatsky hosted by Kunstverein Toronto on Sunday 19 July at 68 Broadview Ave, 8pm. Sawatsky will read excerpts of her writing alongside a digital slideshow of recent paintings and drawings, including a parallel text to Daylight Recordings (for Marlow Moss) – her contribution to BLIND WHITE.
