Final day to see Transactions by curator Cara Tierney at CUAG
This amazing show “celebrating queer experiences” closes today after it’s run at the Carleton University Art Gallery (CUAG) in Ottawa. Curator Cara Tierney has created a space that pulsates with jubilation. The artists flesh out what it means to be deeply connected to your community as well as deeply loved by your community. The work in the show positions joy and empathy as resilience. Beautiful portraits of the Queer and allied community are created through visuals, words, and performance. Transactions is a visually stunning show that includes in situ graffiti by Ottawa based artist Kalkidan Assefa that wraps around corners softening the space “as the show unfolds in the visual embrace of this unswerving ally.” This is a not-to-be-missed exhibit!
WHEN: Sunday, February 12 from 1 – 5 pm WHERE: Carleton University Art Gallery, St. Patrick’s Building, Carleton University,
“Celebrating queer experiences that emerge from transactional creative exchanges, the artists in TRANSACTIONS define, refine, redefine, exult themselves today for the (a)genders of tomorrow, linking communities and challenging ideas of authenticity, allyship, belonging and being.”
Images from top to bottom: Portrait of Kama La Mackerel; graffiti by Kalkidan Assefa with work by Elisha Lim in the background; work by Elisha Lim; more work by Elisha Lim, graffiti by Kalkidan Assefa.
The Art Gallery of Ontario along with the Michaëlle Jean Foundation are looking for your digital art work.
Sometimes the best ideas are last minute! The AGO & FMJF are looking for artists to submit their digital art work to a contest in support of the LGBTTIQQ communities in Canada.
The countdown is on! The submission deadline is this week on Thursday April 25 at the stroke of midnight. The winner takes home $1000 and gets the chance to work with a street artist to mount their work outside of the AGO on the Solidarity Wall.
DETAILS FOR THE 4th WALL YOUTH SOLIDARITY PROJECT:
You must be between the ages of 14 – 30
The subject matter is ” make the invisible experiences of Canada’s Two-Spirit and LGBTI2Q youth visible”
Winner gets $1000 grant
The selected art work will be part of the World Pride Exhibition at the AGO
The public will vote online for the competition winner
The winner will be announced on June 22, 2014 at the Youth Solidarity Forum
Tonight Canadian Art’s amazing documentary film fest, RAFF (Reel Artist Film Fest) launches. Under the direction of the former Executive Director of Canadian Art, Ann Webb, RAFF became the sweet spot in the year for incredible inspiration. The Opening Night has become a big art star event with this year’s guest of honour Kehinde Wiley in attendance. Known for his vibrant portraits of black men that reference the portraiture work of Renaissance painters, Kehinde has (with some trepidation) moved on to paint women. An Economy of Grace is the documentary that follows Kehinde as he searches for the women who will become his new muses.
RAFF will also be screening two of Art21’s New York Close Up shorts this year. The first is by LaToya Ruby Frazier, one of the artists short-listed for last year’s AIMIA AGO Photography Prize.
“Her work interrogates how the toxic postindustrial geography of Braddock, Pennsylvania has shaped multiple generations of her family, acting as a mirror for the complex social problems that beset America today.”Read more…
The second short is Rashid Johnson Makes Things to Put Things On.
“In this film, Rashid Johnson discusses the fluid nature of black identity in America and its escapist tendencies, from the Afrocentric politics of Marcus Garvey to the cosmic philosophy of Sun Ra.”Read more…
Another great art party happens Thursday night with the Opening Soirée for The Artist Project Toronto. Running until Sunday The Artist Project offers three full days to experience beautiful work.
Eric Robitaille’s pieces show his talent as a graphic designer with stories emerging from the many colour washes and textural layers of his work. “During the last few years, the development of several new techniques has allowed for a more spontaneous and raw style, balanced throughout with meticulous detail.”Read more…
The Introduction #5 & #11 by Samara Shuter, The Artist Project Toronto.
Artist Samara Shuter paints crayola coloured canvases of men in suits because the suit “has represented something for decades; power, productivity, strength, economic prosperity, and hard work.” Read more…
Lego City Tower on Hill Elevation by Laird Kay,The Artist Project Toronto.
Laird Kay has studied planning and design so it’s not surprising his photography reaches back to the concepts of city planning via the playful medium of lego as the building blocks.
“Lego City Elevation, Is it Dubai? Is it Hong Kong? New York? Singapore? Toronto? Vancouver? Or all of the above? Cities used to be the result of collective will and a desire to shape – to control – our environments. They were expressions of the things that happened in them. Now they’re about branding and image. Like plastic, like LEGO City, they’re no longer built to last – they can be pulled down when fashions change. LEGO City expresses the modern absence of community in city-shaping. Although stylized, these photographs of LEGO City show us how the line between plastic and uninhabited has become virtually indistinguishable from the “real thing”.” See more…
Tears in the Ice Box by Noah Gano, The Artist Project Toronto.
The technicolour spectrum contained in Laird’s work on how places start to eclipse our human essence with their artificiality is in sharp contrast to the minimalist whiteness of Noah Gano who also makes use of materials the are divorced from the natural. “Navigating through themes of experience and identity, he works conceptually in photography, sculpture, and collage.”See more…
There is much to see at The Artist Project and much to buy with all artists exhibiting work that is for sale and ready to find a new home. Plan on making a purchase!
“This conference consists of both closed working sessions and public events. The conference opens with one and a half days of closed working sessions designed to provide opportunities for artists, educators, curators, scholars, and cultural workers to engage in intensive and critical collaborative discussions about the current state of blackness and the challenges and strategies employed to increase visibility. Emphasis will be placed on developing networks of engagement and knowledge exchange while developing methodologies and practices that inform the future of black Canadian artistic production and teaching.”
One of the panelists is Abdi Osman a “Somali-Canadian photographer whose work focuses on questions of black masculinity as it intersects with Muslim and queer identities.”
Also included on the public panel at Harbourfront Centre (Saturday 2 pm), are the artists Rema Tavares (work seen above), Olivia McGilchrist (work seen below) and Erika DeFreitas.
Corresponding with the conference is the exhibit Face Value by curator / artist Heidi McKenzie.
“The way people look, and the way they are looked at, has a profound effect on the person being seen. For the bi-racial or mixed-race person, the simple act of being seen by others can be fraught with tension and ambiguity. The familiar unconscious act of identifying and categorizing a person’s race based on their face value slips beyond the concrete into the murkiness of the grey zone.”
Another artist using Lego in his work is Ekow Nimako who uses the toy blocks to produce pieces that are about the less-than-playful issues around identity and racial narratives.
For the month of February his work in the show Building Black is part of Daniels Spectrum’s programming around Black History Month. On the main floor of the Arts Centre, Ekow’s work greets you at the side entrance and lines the hallway outside the theatre spaces. His masks reflect the cultural legacy Ekow inherited from his parents who immigrated to Canada from Ghana. They are each infused with their own personality and speak of the strength and tenacity of culture.
His other figures have darker stories which Ekow, also a writer, provides. Mounted on the walls is the poetry he has written for each piece. A golliwog sits less than comfortably, performing a stiff smile that would make Paula Deen feel nostalgic. The life sized figure of a child dressed like a flower girl is exhausting in its detail but also in the back story. Ekow was researching slave narratives and considering the lost girls who would never be granted the innocence of childhood dreams.
Flower Girl Requiem
Forever innocent they say,
Free from taint or world decay,
Pretty basket filled with blooms
Plucked from the earth none too soon.
Love she for all her hope and youth,
Her pretty gown, the purest truth
Her basket and the whites within,
The blooms of cotton, soft and grim.
The world can never seem so stark,
So bright, so safe, so cold and dark
As when gazed upon through childhood’s eyes,
For which my precious dare not oblige.
Alas, her aisle will not be strewn,
For she who’s ever loved is gone
The child of flowers, picked and praised
Forever innocent, they say.
Recent spread in Grid Magazine on Ekow installing his show.
As part of the Building Black show Ekow will be giving an artist talk Talking Black this Sunday 3 – 6 pm at Daniels Spectrum, Regent Park.
More details and schedules for the events can be found on the websites listed below:
Work by Elisha Lim. 
Still We Rise by Rema Tavares, panelist at 
Afro-priation by Rema Tavares, panelist at 
The Introduction #5 & #11 by 
Labeeb by Abdi Osman, panelist at 
Discover Me…Series 1 & 2 by Abdi Osman, panelist at
(whitey) Discovery Bay by Olivia McGilchrist, panelist at 
