Event
Vehemence
Date:October 05, 2017 - December 02, 2017
Sur Gallery presents Vehemence
Opening: Thursday, October 5, 7-9PM
Remarks and Talk: Thursday, October 5, 8PM. Artist Osvaldo Ramírez Castillo and designer Fidel Peña from Underline reference the Salvadoran Civil War in their work.
Conversation with Irene Loughlin, Carlotta McAllister, Steven Schnoor, and Dot Tuer on Regina José Galindo's work and the impact of Canadian mining companies in Guatemala.
Friday, November 17, 7-9 PM
Academics and Professors Steven Schnoor (Concordia University), Carlotta McAllister (York University), and Dot Tuer (OCAD University) as well as Canadian performance artist and writer Irene Loughlin will share their expertise and discuss Regina José Galindo’s practice and performance at Sur Gallery. The artist will be present and will answer questions following the discussion. Moderated by Tamara Toledo. Seating capacity of 25 with some standing room.
About the Speakers
Communications Professor at Concordia University Steven Schnoor is a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Indigenous Stewardship of Environment and Alternative Development and Centre for Indigenous Conservation and Development Alternatives research programs at the Department of Anthropology at McGill University. Schnoor is the filmmaker of a documentary depicting the violent eviction of Mayan subsistence farmers from their homes in rural Guatemala at the behest of a Canadian mining company.
Assistant Professor at York University and Deputy of CERLAC-Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean, Carlotta McAllister’s research is on the formation of political and moral agency in situations of violent conflict and her primary conducted fieldwork is in Guatemala.
Writer and cultural historian Dot Tuer’s research focuses on Canadian and Latin American art of the contemporary and modern periods with a speciality in new media, photography, and performance and has a scholarly interest in colonial Latin America and transcultural exchange. Tuer’s current writing and collaborative projects address the relationship of social memory and witnessing to political agency in the Americas.
Performance artist and writer Irene Loughlin has worked with images challenging the social constructs surrounding mental illness, drawing visual metaphors from medical, ecological and diasporic landscapes. Loughlin has exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally, with particularly close connections to South and Central American art communities.
Please RSVP to alexia(at)surgallery.ca with your full name under the subject line “RSVP Vehemence Panel”.
About the Exhibition:
The exhibition explores the human body as a site of trauma and memory. Artists and designers in Vehemence create an intense vernacular informed by personal and collective narratives that transpire in Central America having a cause and effect in our lives in Canada.
For decades, Central America has been subject to abominable human right violations. Violence pervades social and cultural life with abductions, torture, death squads, and massacres of women, children and the elderly. Indigenous people are subject to the most disruptive forms of repression and fight a long battle against large corporations that are killing the land and people in the name of profit. Drug trafficking across the borders increase the violence and social instability of many, while governments do little to improve the livelihood of its population. Artists in Vehemence having come from Central America bring a particularly compelling voice as they offer testaments, political outcries, and denunciations through the genre of drawing, performance and design. Artists Regina José Galindo (Guatemala), Osvaldo Ramírez Castillo (El Salvador/Canada), and Underline (El Salvador/Canada) attest to these realities not as abstract notions of the disruptive, but as visceral testaments. Images that will either upset the sheltered or remind us of a past of trauma, we all are subject to questioning our own accountability as privileged spectators.
This exhibition and educational programming is curated by Tamara Toledo
About the Artists
REGINA JOSÉ GALINDO is a performance artist and writer. Galindo has had solo exhibitions at Modern Art Oxford (2009); Fundación Joaquim Nabuco, Recife (2011); Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach, California (2012); and Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain (2013); among many others. Her work has been featured in group exhibitions such as: Arte ? Vida: Actions by Artists of the Americas 1960–2000, El Museo del Barrio, New York (2008); Under the Same Sun, Guggenheim Museum, New York (2015); and I Have a Dream, Thessaloniki Centre of Contemporary Art, Salonika (2013). She has participated in various biennials and has received prominent awards for her work. Regina José Galindo lives and works in Guatemala City and is considered to be one of the most subversive voices in contemporary art today.
OSVALDO RAMIREZ CASTILLO is a Vancouver-based artist graduate of OCAD University with an MFA from Concordia University. Ramírez Castillo has exhibited extensively in Canada and The United States in solo and group exhibitions; he has participated in group exhibitions in Cuba, El Salvador, France, Egypt, Taiwan, Macedonia, and Spain; and has received various grants, awards and scholarships for his work. His work is in private and public art collections in Canada and abroad.
FIDEL PEÑA, born in El Salvador, is a graphic designer and co-founder of the Toronto-based graphic design studio, UNDERLINE. Underline develops branding, print and digital projects for commercial clients, as well as self-initiated projects that deal with humanitarian and political issues. Fidel has lectured on design topics in Europe, North America and Latin America.
About the Curator
TAMARA TOLEDO is a Toronto-based curator, artist and educator, graduate of OCAD University and holds an MFA from York University. Toledo is co-founder of the Allende Arts Festival and of LACAP. Toledo has curated numerous exhibitions as well as the Latin American Speakers Series, bringing internationally renowned contemporary artists and curators to Toronto to articulate and discuss issues of identity and intercultural dynamics in contemporary art. Toledo has presented her curatorial work at various conferences in Montreal, New York, Vancouver and Toronto, as well as written articles (delete 'on') for ARM Journal, C Magazine and Fuse.
LACAP acknowledges the financial support of the Ontario Trillium Foundation, Ontario Arts Council, Canada Council for the Arts, Toronto Arts Council, Business for the Arts, and Friends of the Pan Am Path. LACAP also gratefully acknowledges its community partners Toronto Performance Art Collective and Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean.
Start time: 07:00 pm
End time: 05:00 pm
