current-exhibition

Three decades ago, Édouard Glissant proposed in Poetics of Relation that our responsibility to remember is greater than our own history. In our decolonial times and globalizing art locales, this potentializing responsibility remains clumsy and out of reach. This project asks, “How can we make the work of transcultural relation central in the production of global art (or artwork that travels) in ways that both value and deconstruct historical knowledge in the same order?”

This two-part exhibition is durational, polylogical, and writerly. As part of the first iteration at Or Gallery, artists will lead weekly sessions where they will apply selected readings to discussions of their research, works-in-progress, or ‘dreaming’ projects. The aim of this discursive format is to use desire, contradiction, and process to give knowledge on, and with, others.

Over the course of the exhibition, Or Gallery will present works of art by featured artists in an accumulative fashion. This process will unfold alongside the weekly sessions and be completed by the end of the exhibition run on March 15, 2021.

Image: Zinnia Naqvi, Performative Citation, 2019. Courtesy of the Artist.

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Event Schedule

Online Opening Reception
Friday January 15, 10 AM to 11.30 AM PST
Join this public zoom opening reception with Gives-on-and-with curator, Noor Bhangu to hear an introduction to the project and meet the exhibiting artists.
Register to receive the meeting link

Vancouver Art Gallery Art Connects | Performance by Luanda Carneiro Jacoel, with Noor Bhangu and Or Gallery
Thursday February 18, 1:00 PM
Register in advance for this webinar
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

Curatorial Talk by Noor Bhangu
Thursday February 4, 12:00 PM PST
Register to receive the meeting link

Reading Group Schedule
Register to receive the meeting link and readings
Readings will be shared one week before each group.

Reading group led by Zinnia Naqvi
Thursday January 21, 12:00 PM PST
Readings: “Canadian Cultural Policy: A Problem of Metaphysics” (1999) and “Something’s Missing” (2006) from Everything is Relevant: Writings on Art and Life, 1991-2018 by Ken Lum. This book is also available in the Or Bookstore, $65.

Reading group led by Ayman Al Azraq
Thursday January 28, 12:00 PM PST
Readings: TBD

Reading group led by GLAM Collective
Thursday March 4, 12:00 PM PST
Readings: TBD

Reading group led by Luanda Carneiro Jacoel
Thursday February 11, 12:00 PM PST
Readings: TBD

Reading group led by Mariana Muñoz Gomez
Thursday March 11, 12:00 PM PST
Readings: TBD

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Artist Biographies

The Space Between Us explores how digital and new media art, created through innovative incubator labs, workshops, makerspaces and symposia, might create new paradigms for community engagement extending to remote and rural communities both nationally and abroad.

GLAM Collective (Dr. Carla Taunton, Dr. Julie Nagam, Dr. Heather Igloliorte) is a collective of scholars who work on and through Indigenous theory and methodologies, public art, performance art, digital technologies, and curatorial and artistic practices that engage with space and place. GLAM Collective was founded 2018, but we have more than a decade of experience prior to that collaborating through publications, exhibitions, research-creation projects, presentations, symposia, workshops and other initiatives. Notably, in 2016 we together co-edited the special issue PUBLIC 54: Indigenous Art: New Media and the Digital, and throughout 2018 and 2019 we co-curated the three-part, nation-wide artist incubator and public art exhibition series, Memory Keepers, in the cities of Montreal, Charlottetown, and Halifax, as well as Gathering Across Moana (2019) in Toronto.

Zinnia Naqvi is an interdisciplinary artist based in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal and Tkaronto/Toronto. Her work examines issues of colonialism, cultural translation, language, and gender through the use of photography, video, writing, and archival material. Recent works have included archival and re-staged images, experimental documentary films, video installations, graphic design, and elaborate still-lives. Her works often invite the viewer to question her process and working methods. Naqvi’s work has been shown across Canada and internationally. She received an honorable mention at the 2017 Karachi Biennale in Pakistan and was an Artist in Residence at the Art Gallery of Ontario as part of EMILIA-AMALIA Working Group. She is a recipient of the 2019 New Generation Photography Award organized by the Canadian Photography Institute of the National Gallery of Canada in partnership with Scotiabank. She earned a BFA in Photography Studies from Ryerson University and an MFA in Studio Arts from Concordia University.

Ayman Alazraq makes films, photos, and mixed media artworks. His short film The Passport was screened at the National Museum of Cinema in Turin(Italy), the Cologne International Video Art Festival (Germany), among other places. His video and photography installation You From Now On Are Not Yourself was screened in venues in Spain, Norway, Denmark, and the Gaza Strip. In 2015 Alazraq’s short film Oslo Syndrome was presented in the autumn exhibition in Oslo, Dubai International Film Festival and London Palestinian film festival. His collaborative work with Emanuel Svedin was shown at Galleri Podium in Oslo and Theaterhaus Jena in Germany in 2017. Alazraq and Svedin were awarded a permanent public art installation at Høgskolen på Vestlandet, which was inaugurated in 2019. you’re going to miss me when I’m gone, an artwork on the City Hall wall 2020.

Luanda Carneiro Jacoel is a dancer-performer seeking to update questions about body-memory, archive, identity and cultural background. Her work has been crossing boundaries between avant – garde; performance – ritual; installation and site- specific approaches. Currently, she is attending a Master in Performance at the Norwegian Theater Academy (NTA) and has a Bachelor Degree in Communication of Performing Arts – PUC-SP (Brazil). She is co-founder of the platform ACTS – laboratory for performance practices in Oslo, fomenting development among transnational artists, producing and promoting art – related events and performances.

Mariana Muñoz Gomez is a Latinx artist, writer, curator, and settler of colour based on Treaty 1 Territory in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Her work is concerned with language, place, identity, diaspora, and displacement within post- and settler colonial contexts. Her lens-based practice involves a variety of media including text works, screenprints, and photography. Mariana works collaboratively with a number of collectives including Carnation Zine and window winnipeg. She recently completed a Master of Arts in Cultural Studies: Curatorial Practices at the University of Winnipeg.