May 5 - July 9, 2022
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
Complimentary colours work together within a painting. Colours fuse, adopt, blend, and join. Colours cast harmonious compositions, they help each other shine, and they facilitate a multiplicity that expands or captures our understanding of the world. Colours have been a place of solace, contemplation, healing, and comfort. Colours provide an outlet and space to adjust to the instability of our contemporary lives. Those same collaborative networks of solidarity form between women who choose the strength of colour to defy erasure.
The artists Dinorah Catzalco, soJin Chun, Lido Pimienta, and Yelaine Rodriguez resist hierarchal systems of power and reverse the black and white dichotomies that permeate in today’s polarized and violent societies, indicative of a capitalism in crisis. They stand up to class and racial divisions by choosing the weapon of colour as a medium to construct new systems of care, alternative perspectives of kinship, different forms of labour distribution, and foster a place for colour to assume its ability to heal rather than to divide.
Labelled as “women of colour” these artists find within its power a site to overcome pain and claim a space for fulfillment as they propose sites of contestation. Through the potential of colour they heal wounds inflicted by neocolonialism, neoliberal economies, and patriarchal structures. The artists reflect on the future by learning from a past, and navigate decolonizing methods to move forward, using the multiplicity and power of colour to offer a place of comfort and relief in times of polarization and division.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
DINORAH CATZALCO is a Mexican artist based in the Ottawa-Gatineau region. Catzalco earned a BFA at the Université du Québec in Outaouais in 2007 and has been an active member of the artistic community. Her works have been shown in various solo and group exhibitions across Quebec, such as the Centre d’art La Sarre, the Galerie Montcalm, La Tohu: the city of circus arts in Montreal, among others. In 2018, her travelling exhibition Tecocuahuitl: l’axe du monde was nominated at the Culturiades gala in the category Prix du CALQ- Work of the Year in the Outaouais region. In 2019, her most recent series of paintings were featured in a group exhibition titled Codex: la traversée du silence with the financial support from the Conseil des arts de Montréal. Catzalco’s work draws inspiration from her own immigration experience, reflecting on identity and the struggles faced within a foreign land.
SOJIN CHUN is a Toronto-based artist,curator, and educator that explores the alternative dialogues that emergein-between cultures and disciplines. Chun’s work explores narratives that exist outside of dominant representations in collaboration with diverse communities. Through international artist residencies, soJin has developed a collaborative art practice to work with local communities fighting to overcome gentrification and displacement. As an artist, Chun has participated in numerous international film festivals such as the Oberhausen InternationalFilm (Germany), VideoFormes (France) and CineToro (Colombia). She has exhibited Internationally in DIY art spaces, galleries, and museums. soJin’s video worksare represented by GIV (Montreal), CFMDC (Toronto) and V-Tape (Toronto). Chunhas a B.A. in Applied Arts from Ryerson University and a Master’s in Communications and Culture from Ryerson/York Universities.
LIDO PIMIENTA is a Toronto-based, Colombian-born musician, interdisciplinary artist, and curator. She has performed and exhibited her work around the world since 2002, exploring the politics of gender, race, motherhood, identity, and the construction of a Canadian landscape in the Latin American diaspora and vernacular. Her latest album Miss Colombia takes her ecstatic hybridity to a new level, building on the “nu” intersection of electronica and cumbia established by her first two albums, Color, released in 2010, and the 2017 Polaris Prize-winning La Papessa, as Canadian album of the year. Pimienta has garnered multiple award nominations including a 2020 Latin Grammy nomination for Best Alternative Music Album and a 2021 Grammy nomination for Best Latin Rock, Urban, or Alternative Album.
YELAINE RODRIGUEZ Born in 1990 in the Bronx, where she lives and works today, Yelaine Rodriguez is an Afro-Dominican United Statesian artist, educator, curator, and cultural organizer. She received her BFA in Fashion Design from Parsons School of Design | The New School (2013) and her MA in Latin American and Caribbean Studies / Museum Studies from New York University (2021). Rodriguez conceptualizes wearable art, sculptures, and site-specific installations drawing connections between Black cultures in the Caribbean and the United States captured through photography and video documentation.
ABOUT THE CURATOR
TAMARA TOLEDO is a Chilean-born Toronto-based curator, scholar, and artist, graduate of OCAD University and holds an MFA from York University. Toledo is co-founder of the Allende Arts Festival and of Latin American Canadian Art Projects - LACAP. For over a decade, Toledo has curated numerous exhibitions offering spaces, platforms and opportunities to Latin American and diasporic artists. She designed and curated the Latin American Speakers Series inviting internationally renowned contemporary artists, writers, theorists, and curators to Toronto such as Gerardo Mosquera, Luis Camnitzer, and Tania Bruguera, among many others to articulate and discuss issues of identity and intercultural dynamics in contemporary art. Toledo has presented her work at various conferences in Montreal, Chicago, New York, Vancouver and Toronto. Her writing has appeared in ARM Journal, C Magazine, Fuse and Canadian Art. Her practice often follows an interdisciplinary approach and touches on notions of memory, identity, diasporas, issues of power and representation, trauma, and international artistic-cultural interaction. Toledo is currently the Curator of Sur Gallery and is a PhD candidate in Art History and Visual Culture at York University.
PROGRAMMING
Opening Reception
Thursday May 5th, 6-8 pm EST at Sur Gallery
Curator Tour with Tamara Toledo
Thursday, April 12th, 7pm ET via Zoom
Watch Recording here
Online Artist Talk with soJin Chun and Yelaine Rodriguez
Thursday, June 9th, 6pm ET via Zoom
Watch recording here here Online Artist Talk with soJin Chun and Yelaine Rodriguez
For more information about the exhibition please visit Sur Gallery Virtual.
Gallery Hours:
Thursdays and Fridays: noon-6:00PM
Saturdays: 11 AM-5 PM
LOCATION
Sur Gallery Exhibition: 39 Queens Quay East, Suite 100.
