THE FESTIVAL OF THE BODY
OPENING NIGHT
A circle conversation with artists and creators followed by a celebration meet and greet.
Wednesday, February 12th, 2020
5 pm to 9 pm
OCAD University
100 McCaul Street
MCA Room 270
Great Hall
Second Floor
EXHIBITION DATES
February 12th to 27th, 2020
Funded in part by the Slaight Family Foundation
The Festival of the Body is a showcase of student work that engages with the notion of the body and or figure through a wide range of concepts and media.
This exhibition will include drawings, paintings, sculpture, printmaking, photography, publications, performance, time-based and interactive works.
Students from all programs were invited to take part in this exhibition through an open call for submissions.
Juried by Natalie Waldburger, Wrik Mead, Julius Poncelet Manapul, Spencer Harrison, and Tannis Nielsen.
Circle Conversation Moderator: Victoria Ho & Maya Skarzenski-Smith
Guest Speakers: Johanna Householder, Anne Bourne, Jodyn Chan, Marissa Largo, Sanja Dejanovic, Julius Poncelet Manapul and participating student artists.
Morphosis is the name of the Thom Mayne’s architecture firm who leading the OCAD CREATIVE CITY CAMPUS expansion. Definition of morphosis on Webster. 1: the mode of development of an organism or one of its parts. 2: a nonadaptive structural modification.
My project intends a conversation between the American artist Robert Rauschenberg (1925 - 2008) and Brazilian artist Lygia Clark (1920-1988). Rauschenberg, which was well known for working with non-traditional materials and objects were employed in various combinations, and Lygia Clark a Brazilian post-concretist, who challenging traditional models of perception, participation, and objecthood, “Clark created objects that exceeded the bounds of the autonomous transcendental picture plane. By fracturing the surfaces of her paintings, creating objects that possess an interior and exterior, and by requiring her participants to physically manipulate her work” (Art Observer)
Using found objects, specifically metal scrap from OCAD recycled trash, I intend to activate the OCAD Creative City project in the way it is impacting the performance of current students and also showing the waste that may be occurring in the renovation of the facilities.
The elements and material chosen for the installation are a reference to Rauschenberg work Gluts (1965), who made it with metal scrap and others from industrial processes, transforming them into sculptures. ‘It’s a time of glut. Greed is rampant. I’m just exposing it, trying to wake people up. I simply want to present people with their ruins …’ – quoted in Gluts Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2009. Morphosis is also a response to the Lygia Clark Bichos,1965 (critters), consist on folding steel sculptures that are manipulable and allow the viewer to constantly change and rearrange their articulated pieces, creating an interactive work.
The location chosen for the installation Morphosis - The Land of the Creative City is the Butterfield Park, the site works both private and public space, and my intention serves as a protest and as an alternative to the lack of space for students to work, store and exhibit their work
by Helio Eudoro
A feeling of nostalgia and sadness struck me when I attended an event in Toronto’s gay village after being away from the neighbourhood for several years. Instead of picturesque Victorian houses, the area is now populated mostly by giant glass and concrete buildings rising up to the sky and covering the stars. Cranes, mud, rubble, dust and noise also occupy the streets, signs that many more developments are on the way. It was sad seeing many of my memories erased; the houses full of life, lights and music, people laughing and having fun, parties, bars, and activist groups, all reduced to a cold, pasteurized scene covered with human storage boxes. The gentrification is here, in our face, in our street, in our soul.
Even where I live in Alexandra Park a major revitalization project is going on and it’s changing the landscape there as well. It’s also happening in Kensington Market, Chinatown, Queen and King Street West, and Parkdale. In fact, Toronto currently has more cranes in the sky than anywhere else on the continent according the latest edition of its bi-annual North American “Crane Index,” which counts the number of construction cranes active across Canada and the U.S. (O’Neil, BlogTo)
But is gentrification that bad? The process of cities modernizing is inevitable, but it ends up affecting the most susceptible populations. The increasingly contested concept of gentrification-induced displacement is matching the argument that the most vulnerable benefit from social mixing to produce an argument for ‘positive gentrification’. The notion that new middle-class residents not only attract more investment but also bring opportunities for “upward social mobility” to low-income people who can stay in gentrifying areas has become a political rhetoric. While there are good intentions and interesting projects in pursuit of these benefits, the disadvantages of the social mix imposed on vulnerable communities even where they are not physically displaced remain uncertain. (Shaw and Hagemans 323-341)
We Were Here, consists of a series of videos, photographs, media files and materials such as soil, rubble and pavement taken from construction site debris. This multimedia installation reflects my view of gentrification. As a daily eyewitness to the changing streets of Toronto, I follow and document the demolition and construction as well as the people who occupy these new spaces. Most of the videos and photos are of the same sites, taken from different angles and times during the construction process to create a haunting and evocative layering of imagery that speaks to the transformation of the city and the passage of time. The photos, from my archive, show the deconstruction and reconstruction of the city in the last ten years. Various media files from CityNews, CBC, and Global about the effect of gentrification, and a video seminar of Toronto’s future housing strategies are also included.
The diaspora of gentrification excludes the unwanted, and those not part of the chain of the new urban scene. Erasing memories, hiding human waste and replacing it with a generation that doesn’t care. Although the nostalgia of urban architecture makes us want to preserve heritage and memory, it may just be a desire for permanence, a way to feel comfortable looking at everything the same way all the time. Deep down we have a desire not to change, just to be eternal. My work may help to preserve memory, to warn that we should not erase the past, but to build a future that also carries all our imperfections and desires. Why not?
WE WERE HERE, 2019
Mixed-media installation
Dimensions variable
Helio Eudoro (b.1965)
