ÆßÐDzʿª½±

The Warren G. Flowers Art Gallery is proud to offer it’s first ever summer artist residency to alumna Sylvia Trotter Ewens (Fine Arts, 2014).  Sylvia will utilize the time and space to advance paintings and work on projections in completion of her MFA (Painting) at Concordia University.

She writes, ‘This is a body of work pulling from writings I’ve made on my time caregiving and experiencing loss after my mother’s passing. In these writings I used the garden as an allegory for these experiences as I tackled the memories of this time through writing and painting as a means to congeal its memory. 

Following the path of a two-year intensive Visual Arts program is not an easy task. Students are asked to be vulnerable, to open themselves up, to do things they have never done before. They are challenged and pushed to their creative limits. All their hard work, talent and ambition have culminated into Expo 24: Visions Unveiled, a thoughtful, inspiring, and creative exhibition.

Exhibiting students:  Chloé Amblard, Leo Anderson-Aubin, Maya Aupin, Orly Benyaminov, Isa Bernales, Carolanne Blais, Olivia Bourque, Catherine Buckley, Emma Chaaban, Emy Croteau, Simone Deschênes, Sofiane Dupuis, Aïyana Faye-Giard, Hailey Gardner, Dinesa Ghosh, Keana Hétu, Zihao Ji, E.A.

ÆßÐDzʿª½±’s Journey’s Program proudly presents Living Perspectives, an exhibition of selected works from 20 Indigenous students highlighting their research-creation findings through photography, painting, digital illustration, leather making and other art forms.  From photo-documenting the urban moose hide tanning process, to building narrative sovereignty through visual storytelling, and completing the hands-on practice of making fish skin leather, these emerging Indigenous creative’s are cracking open the colonial pavement.

Featuring Works by: Phylicia Benjamin, Megan Bosum, Julia Clement, Natasha Doolan, Shayla Etienne, Destinee Hester, Shevaun Jacobs, Phoenix Lahache, Shaylene Louttit-Rupert, Wes Masty Roussel, Melissa Matoush, Stacey Matoush, Zye Mayo-McComber, Demma Montour-Diabo, Lauri Mulucto,  Mark Neacappo, Shirleyann Rabbitskin, Faith Shecapio, Tapisa Tulugak, Kiva Williams, and Jade Whitebean.

Pedestrian Values reflects on economic shifts, labour patterns and development in post-industrial urban cities. Using metal fabrication, casting, and interventionist tactics to alter coded materials and infrastructure found in public space, the installations reveal underlying power structures in urban environments, critiquing capitalist value systems focused on profit and development, exposing how these ideals are built into our everyday environment.

The recurring banknote pattern from the board game, Monopoly, serves as an explicit critique of capital’s control over spatial relations that carries through the exhibition, adorning a traffic barrel, cast coins scattered across the floor of the gallery, and a construction privacy mesh.

Wìdjideyamawowin brings together Craig Commanda’s work in film, video, beadwork, and other media. Also known as a poet and musician, this artist from Kitigan Zibi territory (near Maniwaki, Quebec) presents work which is a meditation on being, identity, and culture.

Biography

Craig Commanda is an Anishnaabe multi-disciplinary artist from Kitigan Zibi First Nation, whose work encompasses film, music, beadwork, poetry, photography, traditional crafts, hide tanning, and digital fabrication.  He holds a BFA in Film Production from Concordia University. 

ÆßÐDzʿª½±’s Department of Photography is proud to present Scintilla, the selected work of  students nearing the end of their three-year program.  Part of their preparation, and requirement to graduate, this exhibition showcases the breadth and depth of their acquired skills, as well as the variety and dynamism of the program which nurtured them.  Included is the work of:  Ruth Aibangbe, Mario Al Khoury, Michelle Andrews, Adriana Balaban, Nina Binetti, Joshua Bubis, Elizabeth Charlton-Febrile, Oriette Constantineau, Laurence Dyotte, Gustavo Gallegos, Jamie Gianfelice, Grace Kennedy, Tommy-Paul Keo, Taylor Kirby, Katherina Kunanec, Samson Marthet, Ekaterina Nurova, Robin, Bahareh Rafati, Marjan Safari, and Sofia Terrigno.

Bahar Taheri approaches contemporary concerns through painting, video, and mixed-media installations. Through her practice, she has delved into aspects of gender, identity, collective memory, and historical events, the means through which our socio-political circumstances are shaped.

More recently, her work is subtly moving from figuration to geometric abstraction. In addition, Taheri has been deconstructing buildings; folding and unfolding monumental walls until binaries, absolutes and hierarchies dissolve into a reconstructed rupture from reality.

Her project, Oneness, depicts a utopian universe at the intersection of several countries, cultures, and beliefs.

My painting practice has an ambivalent relationship with the history of Canadian landscape painting. I am interested in how romantic notions of nature that correspond with popular modernist Canadian painters often fall apart in a contemporary context.

I use photographs of my suburban hometown of Port Coquitlam as the basis for many of my paintings. While these photographs have a connection to my own history, they also connect to a larger history of Canada and the legacy of colonialism in our country.

Catalina Hernandez Camacho, Zion Axell Fabro, Leen Jaafar, Jona Loomis, Ximena Ribeiro Tamiez, and Alessandro Ruvo present works which evoke a mindset in diverse and playful ways.

These graduates of ÆßÐDzʿª½±â€™s respected Visual Arts program are distinguished by having began their studies in a global pandemic. Most started their ÆßÐDzʿª½± coursework under partial, or ‘hybrid’ presence in smaller groups courses such as printmaking and sculpture; the rest were carried out in confinement at home, with online lectures and meetings

This was reflected in the work presented in this year’s graduation—a turning of the mind inward, to issues surrounding the self and occasionally family, which leads to the title of this presentation, mindset.

The ÆßÐDzʿª½± Fine Arts department is proud to present this year’s graduating student exhibition, entitled Liminal. A culmination of their two years of intensive studies, this exhibition highlights the wide variety of artistic practices explored by the thirty graduating participants. The exhibition will extend from the gallery to Room 2G.4 and the 2G corridor.

Graduating students include: Issa Emmanuelle Albite, Anisia Alexe, Zoë Bleho-Levacher, Marianne Boisseau, Kayliah Della Foresta, Julia Demers, Rowan Michael Draper, Simone Duhamel, Zion Axelle Fabro, Ella Gauthier, Yuan He (Charlotte) Ge, Hichem Gervais, Emie Hamanaka-Delisle, Hannah Hamelin, Catalina Hernandez-Camacho, Leen Jaafar, Teodora Hristova Kachulkova, Jona Loomis, Emlyne Marchand, Anthony Mastrangelo , Roberto Alejandro Nunez Almendarez, Krisha Patel, Raina Proulx-Sanyal, Ming Qi, Anaïs-Aimée Rafaelsen, Ximena Ribeiro Tamez, Alessandro Ruvo, Angel Starnino, Nan Wang, and Le Shui Yu.