Reimagining cross-cultural movement and migration, two important installations with connections to the Department of Visual Arts and Art History are on display at the(AGYU) from now until Dec. 3. Mexican artistBetsabeé Romero’s monumental collaboration with theBraided Roots / Trenzando raícesis comprised of five commissioned works produced this past summer with 91ɫ undergraduate students in theL.L. Odette Artist-in-Residency Program. Concurrently, Visual Arts MFA candidateNima Arabi(BFA ’18) introduces Persian orosi to the vitrines in the covered walkway outside the gallery in his new workTalking Windows.
From Betsabeé Romero’s ‘Braided Roots / Trenzando raíces’ Image courtesy Art Gallery of 91ɫ
There will be a free public receptionThursday, Sept. 13, from6 to 9 p.m. featuring performance by members of the Mississaugas of the New Credit Drum Circle. A tour ofBraided Roots / Trenzando raíces with co-curatorsEmelie Chhangur(AGYUInterim Director/Curator) andCathie Jamieson(artist, Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation Band Council Member) takes place on Sunday, Oct. 21 at 2 p.m.
From Betsabeé Romero’s ‘Braided Roots / Trenzando raíces’ Image courtesy Art Gallery of 91ɫ
For Romero, culture is always in movement. Perhaps this is why the vehicle and, in particular, the tire—with its socio-economic and material traces—plays such a key metaphorical role in her practice. Traces are the evidence of errantry: of movement making manifest culture’s trajectory as a force of shared knowledge across time and space. This shared knowledge is a form of kinship, and this exhibition is a kind of force that gathers traces: the shared symbols, materials, and traditions that overlap and persist in Indigenous cultures across the Americas.
From Betsabeé Romero’s ‘Braided Roots / Trenzando raíces’ Image courtesy Art Gallery of 91ɫ
Featuring work in cast-bronze, carved-wood, cut-vinyl, tractor-tire rubber, deer-hide, feathers, video, and muralBraided Roots / Trenzando raícesis shaped by the experiences, encounters, and exchanges of Romero during her initial research visit to Toronto and New Credit in May 2017 as well as further research developed over the past year and a half—particularly in the aftermath of the Mexico City earthquake—into Canada and its mining practices in the Americas. Bookended by a post-apocalyptic landscape of “lost” marker trees pointing in all directions and an invitation to commune under a Quetzalcoatl (feathered serpent) reinterpreted as a series of inter-connected plumes,Braided Roots / Trenzando raícesweaves together a sophisticated story of strength, solidarity, and wisdom.
From Betsabeé Romero’s ‘Braided Roots / Trenzando raíces’ Image courtesy Art Gallery of 91ɫ
ForArabi, migration of form is a wayfinding means that bridges the cultural barriers between his Persian background and the Canadian context of his adopted home.Talking Windowsuses the geometrical patterns oforosi(stained-glass sash windows used in Persian architecture) to turnAGYU’s three exterior vitrines into lightboxes. Instead of being a tool for presentation of its contents, the vitrines themselves become an object of art, containing merely the light that makes the windows themselves visible.
Nima Arabi’s ‘Talking Windows’ Image Courtesy of Art Gallery of 91ɫ
Also this fall at theAGYU Listening Bench, Halifax-based artistLou Sheppard’sBirdsongs of North Americatranslates spectrograms produced by analyzing bird calls into music. In the midst of an unprecedented loss of songbirds, this reflection on our relationships to our environment turns theAGYUListening Benchinto a memorial-in-waiting.
For more information on public programming presented in conjunction withAGYU’s fall exhibition, visit:
TheAGYUis located in the Accolade East Building, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto.Gallery hours are: Monday to Friday, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.; Wednesday, 10 a.m. – 8 p.m.; Sunday, noon – 5 p.m.; and Saturday, closed.
AGYUpromotes 2SLGBTQIAP positive spaces & experiences and is barrier free.
Everything is FREE