"UNSETTLED: TRANSCULTURAL EXPERIENCES"
Maria Patricia Abuel, Dalia El Toark, Amanda Foulds, Monica Grunwald, Ellen Chang-Richardson, Lila Fatehi
CURATED BY Julius Poncelet Manapul & Neda Omidvar
Gallery 1313, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, August 2-27, 2023.
“Unsettled: Transcultural Experiences” brings together a multimedia artwork installation from personal narratives of 6 IBPOC female artists. Examining the effects of colonialism on diasporic and transcultural bodies, the exhibition explores the concept of eternal displacement, family kinship, and the idea of homeland through global identity constructs and memory. Bound by ideas of digital kinship and a shared feeling of floating through colonial landscapes, these artists delve into notions of unsettledness through a multimedia body of works.
In excavating the concepts of family roots, and examining their sense of ambivalence in belonging, the exhibition opens up the concept of home. Here, home exists not as a state of tangible space, but as a fleeting idea of an unattainable space: a crafted place where conversations, safety, and be/longing can occur within the stillness of the sterile white gallery. In doing so, this exhibition simultaneously questions its own purpose and intentions in housing these unsettled, transcultural, experiences.
Maria Patricia Abuel
“Too Sweet”
Medium: Digital Video, Wingback Chair Owned by Artist’s Aunt, Foldable Table, Candy Bowl, Candies, Doilie, Banig Filipino Mat, Loop Projection.
Duration: 00:03:59
Size: Life Size Scale, Varied.
Date: 2018
Artist Statement:
As more Canadian winters go by and more bags of Splenda emptied, the artist’s concern and respect for her aunt grows – as reflected in a moving portrait accompanied by an open letter.
The exploration of her Filipino-Canadian identity is a constant theme in the artist’s practice, interested in the narratives within the Filipino diaspora. In a more personal narrative, the artist honours her aunt while reflecting on her experiences as a first generation Filipino-Canadian and her family history. The artist chooses her aunt’s nursing graduation portrait to recognize her aunt’s dedication and sacrifice as a nurse and matriarch of the family. By choosing an older portrait and having it gradually covered, the artist emphasizes the importance of time and ephemerality of life as she worries about her aunt’s health and well-being.
Dalia El Toark
“Embroidering Diasporic Identity”
Medium: Embroideries stretched on embroidery hoop, cotton floss, image transfer on chiffon Hijab. Digital Print on matte paper in white frame. Video Animations Loop on TV.
Duration: 00:01:57
Size: 6 Hoops between 6”- 9” with 15” x 20” chiffon Hijab. 8 Frames with 8” x 10” digital prints on 12” x 16” frames. Video projection scale varies to the monitor.
Date: 2020-2021
Artist Statement:
The animated embroideries reflect my diasporic belonging, digitally combining Palestinian tatreez with personal images which occupy the fabrics stretched on embroidery hoops. Transnational experiences depict the loss and celebration of my Palestinian heritage while the colonial practice of embroidery questions women's prescribed roles and emphasizes the erasure of language, cultural traditions, and identity. I depict a sense of alienation and unsettlement through the constant change of animations and mirroring that expresses the two-sided desire to belong in a place of unbelonging. I disseminated criticalities through embroidered Arabic text and the hijab that provides a surface for these narratives.
4 Book Series: “Home”, “Untitled” (Across the River), “Untitled” (By the Sea), “First Winter”
Medium: Digital Photograph Print, ed. 1/25
Size: 18” x 24”
Date: 2020, 2022, 2022, 2020
“The Landscape is an Echo”
Medium: Collage
Size: Approximately 18” x 24”
Date: 2023
Artist Statement:
As a curator and lens-based artist, my practice has focused on re-contextualizing and reforming archives. Historical documents and archives have been a source of inspiration in my work - notably what is included and excluded from personal and institutional collections and sites of knowledge. This area of focus is influenced by my South Asian identity and experience growing up and studying art in Canada from a Eurocentric view.
My grandfather was an artist who worked in a variety of mediums and often created work featuring Roman Catholic iconography. His paintings, in particular, took inspiration from Western classics. Growing up and studying art in Canada, I developed the same admiration for these works, however, I often felt that I needed to perform disdain for these artworks as I was not represented within them. While Indian subjects were not represented directly in the Western Canon, we grew up seeing and idealizing them, and by extension they have become part of our culture through legacies of colonialism.
These photographs draw parallels between the themes, textures, colors and compositions in my family images, and the images found on the pages of art history textbooks to consider what it means to mimic and reflect Western imagery yet be excluded from its identity.
Monica Grunwald
“ofrenda: Deconstructing the Day”
Medium: Plates, acrylic paint, plastic fruits, dried flowers, clay skulls from Oaxaca
Size: 8’ x 5’
Date: 2020-2023
Artist Statement:
My interdisciplinary work intersects my own experiences with grappling death and explores symbolic representations of loss and mourning through my Mexican culture. De-constructing the Day of the Dead ofrenda, which honours life and death, has altered my relationship to objects; ritual and decorative shrines have become the basis of my art practice. My installations work to connect me with my ancestral roots and have allowed me to darkly contrast these roots to the colonial canons of artmaking, western modes of grieving, and most importantly, to resist the violent borders that separate Latinx families. My works are made from the same resistance that actively dismantles the power structures and borders that keep us out. They are for those who have been separated by cages, borders and further by their status.
During the opening night on Friday, August 4th, 2023, the "ofrenda" installation refused to be settled and rested balancing in its own instability. The happening on the opening night of the self destruction and the collapse of the crucifix form offers us a spiritual message of the unnamed children rendered on the plates on both sides of the crucifix that forms unreadable portraits of the children that had died between the boarders of USA and Mexico. Their unrested message of unsettled happenings strike through during the opening night as an unexpected performance of materials, with the knowledge that even these curated materials situated in the "ofrenda" carry its own energy and spirit. At that one moment in time around 9:45pm the installation that created the structure of the crucifix arms had collapsed, sending us all a message. This installation truly embodies it's own unsettled transcultural experiences from the spiritual after life.
UNSETTLED: Transcultural Experiences. Ellen Chang-Richardson. Opening Night Performance. Friday, August 4th, 2023, 7:30pm.
Ellen Chang-Richardson
“hornet in a bell jar”
Medium: Chinese calligraphic ink and Japanese Mitsubishi Signo UM-151 Black ink pen on mylar, driftwood, live found wood.
Size: 14’ 4” x 4’ 11”
Date: 2023
“echoes”
Medium: Chinese calligraphic ink and Japanese Mitsubishi Signo UM-151 Black ink pen on mylar
Size: various
Date: 2023
Artist/Writer Statement:
“hornet in a bell jar” excavates personal family history and explores the lingering echoes of intergenerational trauma. Both a visual poem and a site-specific installation, this multi-media piece is inspired by cross-cultural artistic practices. On one end, Canadian artist Betty Goodwin’s Tarpaulin series — themselves an exploration of human imprint and things once had, now lost; on the other end, ancient Chinese calligraphic scrolls — traditional form of mark-making and record-keeping.
Lila Fatehi
“Twilight”
Medium: Single-Channel Video, Black & White, Sound, Loop Projection.
Duration: 00:01:00
Size: Life Size Projection Varied, Chair is 38” x 18” x 16”
Date: 2012
Artist Statement:
In this video, I tried to concentrate on a cycle of movement and the stillness of human life which has been stuck in an infinite present. Time is in a loop and indeterminately passes without ever coming to an end. The monumental figure of my mother has been lost in time and space, but the energy of her experience is not ended.
The sound is a medium, which acts as the potential energy for existence.