Power in Resistance – Sur Gallery
Sur Gallery presents Power in Resistance
May 2 – June 29, 2019
Opening Reception: Thursday, May 2, 2019, 8-10PM
Artist talk with Carlos Colín and Lucia Cuba: Thursday, May 2, 2019, 7-8PM
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
This exhibition exposes voices of resistance and resilience that flourish throughout the Americas as a response to centuries of racism, poverty, and widespread economic and social exclusion of Indigenous peoples in the region. From the southern hemisphere of the Mapuche to the Cree in the north, artists in Power in Resistance address the impact of colonization, including forced sterilization, risk of language extinction, residential schools, shaming queer identities, and violence. Counteracting such attempts of cultural erasure, these artists continue a path of truth, acknowledgment, power and transformation. Contemporary artists Ivan Argóte (Colombia), Marilyn Boror (Guatemala), Sebastián Calfuqueo (Chile), Carlos Colín (Mexico/Vancouver), Lucía Cuba (Peru/New York), and Meryl McMaster (Canada) not only present the legacy of colonialism, but challenge its dominant, accepted narratives by decolonizing the past and present.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
IVAN ARGOTE explores the relationship between history, politics and the construction of our own subjectivities. His works are critical and anti-establishment, dealing with the idea of bringing affects to the politics, and politics to the affects with a strong and tender tone.
MARILYN BOROR studies, researches, and analyzes the indigenous languages of Central America, focusing on the power of the word as a historical trigger for cultural meanings and questions of identity. Her work questions the architectural form of words and the relationship between the word and the hidden image, placing the indigenous language face to face with Spanish.
SEBASTIAN CALFUQUEO lives and works in Santiago de Chile. Of Mapuche origin, his work draws on his cultural heritage as a starting point to propose a critical reflection on the social, cultural and political status of the Mapuche subject within the current Chilean society. His work includes installation, ceramics, performance and video, with the aim of exploring both the similarities and cultural differences and the stereotypes that occur in the crossing between indigenous and Westernized ways of thinking.
CARLOS COLIN’s research investigates how contemporary art, artists, and art institutions are involved in current social movements and, by extension, how art contributes to social change and social activism in Latin America. As a Latin American artist, Colín brings perspectives on the discourse of how art evolves inside societies, how it finds expressions, how it changes over time, and the implications this has for Latin America.
LUCIA CUBA’s work critically approaches fashion design and the construction and exploration of garments as performative and political devices, broadening the understanding of the role of fashion design objects, from purely functional, commercial or aesthetic considerations to social, ethical and political perspectives. Her work is driven by the desire to harness the agency of clothes and question the established language of design, as experienced today, and by the attempt to broaden the potential grammars of critical action through clothes, both as wearable devices and as affective and embodied cultural media.
MERYL MCMASTER is a Canadian artist based in the city of Ottawa. Her work is predominantly photography based, incorporating the production of props, sculptural garments and performance forming a synergy that transports the viewer out of the ordinary and into a space of contemplation and introspection. McMaster is the recipient of the Scotiabank New Generation Photography Award, the REVEAL Indigenous Art Award, Charles Pachter Prize for Emerging Artists, the Canon Canada Prize, the Eiteljorg Contemporary Art Fellowship, the OCAD U Medal and was long listed for the 2016 Sobey Art Award.
ABOUT THE CURATOR
TAMARA TOLEDO is a Chilean-born 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 Latin American Canadian Art Projects – LACAP. For over a decade Toledo has curated numerous exhibitions as well as the Latin American Speakers Series for which she has invited internationally renowned contemporary artists and curators to Toronto such as Gerardo Mosquera, Luis Camnitzer, Tania Bruguera, Alfredo Jaar, among many others to articulate and discuss issues of identity and intercultural dynamics in contemporary Latin American art. Toledo has presented her curatorial work at various conferences in Montreal, New York, Vancouver and Toronto as well as written articles on Latin American art for ARM Journal, C Magazine and Fuse. Toledo is presently the Curator of Sur Gallery.
ABOUT SUR GALLERY
SUR GALLERY is Toronto’s first gallery space dedicated to the exhibition and critical engagement of contemporary Latin American art. Sur Gallery is a project of Latin American Canadian Art Projects (LACAP)
LACAP acknowledges the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, and The City of Toronto through section 37 and Toronto Arts Council as well as our sponsor Toronto Image Works.