April 19 – June 3rd, 2023
Vinicius de Aguiar Sanchez, Rixt de Boer, Mylène Boisvert, Camille Charbonneau, Jonathan Inksetter, Ryth Kesselring, Po B. K. Lomami, Alli Melanson, Pablo Pérez Díaz, Paras Vijan
Prepared with the assistance of Caroline Stewart (Curatorial Intern, 2023)
Produced with the support of the Frederick and Mary Kay Lowy Art Education Fund
Alli Melanson’s I [wish to] Know Everything, activates the gallery vitrine through a time-based juxtaposition of two photographs. A conceptually driven diptych, Melanson’s proposition interchanges a single image based on gallery hours. The photographs are of the facing storefront windows of a church and a sex shop, where their signage appears in each other’s reflection. Melanson creates a third overlapping of these linguistic images, situating the viewer at the liminal space within the institution, that is between the gallery and university lobby.
Po B. K. Lomami’s work Force and Form III and IV also occurs between institutional spaces. The multimedia installation displays a performance where the artist bends their body to the architecture of the Canadian Armed Forces building and to the SPVM precinct near the gallery. Passerbys become a part of the performance’s recording, just as the gaze of the idle viewer implicates them in the work when they appear on its monitors.
A politics of idle bodies are echoed in Pablo Pérez Díaz’s portrait-documentary project, Igual pero diferente (Same but Different), which considers the conditions for a generation of young Spanish men. Pérez Díaz describes an ‘era of the self’ in relation to his subjects who struggle for individuation amidst larger homogenizing forces, contending with precarity, underemployment and boredom in the context of recurring global financial and social crises. Auto-portraiture is at the centre of Jonathan Inksetter’s I’ve been meaning to tell you and The key to remembering is forgetting who you are, which grapple with the relationship between traumatic brain injury, personality change, identity loss in relation to artistic practice, memory and personal history.
Vinicius De Aguiar Sanchez’s Mnemonics of Creations brings atemporal worlds together through his practice that includes animation and printmaking. Drawing from pre-Columbian mythology, the artist imagines a post-pandemic future, sequential narrative form allows the viewer to take in this possible world. Camille Charbonneau also responds to institutions and belief systems, specifically the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints position towards LGBTQ+ people and the artist’s own religious identity. Working with their father, the artist has created “The Family: A Proclamation to the World” Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS) document, using the statement to address the church’s convention of the family through weaving structure anew.
Approaches that hybridize textiles and photography emerge as a line of thinking shared across the cohort. Rhyt Kesselring’s Web of Connections consists of documentation of a fibre installation in a forest. It is accompanied by a sound piece using electromyography to read electrical signals which are turned into audio textures allowing for ecosophic listening. Conversely, Mylène Boisvert’s Your memory is my breath departs from a family photograph and leads to a woven textile work. In the artist’s words, these works “captures the emotional correspondence of listening to a happy memory told by my mother.”
Toys on the Rise by Rixt de Boer departs from quotidian acts of walking and sorting photographs of graffiti that she later adds embroidery to. Paras Vijan’s video Looking at photographs is both performance and documentation of the artist working. His photographs Honestly and Story-teller demonstrate a dialogical function in his work, and practice, which is reflexive of the photographic act.
– Eli Kerr
Eli Kerr is based in Montreal, Canada. Establishing and operating various art spaces and contexts for exhibition-making has been central to his practice since 2014. He has previously completed curatorial residencies at International Studio and Curatorial Program (New York, USA, 2017) Rupert (Vilnius, Lithuania, 2018) and at Fogo Island Arts (Newfoundland, Canada, 2019), which he was awarded by the Hyntashyn Foundation as part of their Fogo Island Arts Young Curator Residency. Kerr received a master’s degree in visual studies from the University of Toronto in 2021 and received his BFA from Concordia in 2015. In the summer of 2020, he opened Parc Offsite, a 18m2 exhibition space on Avenue du Parc in Montreal that focuses on the potential of small-scale exhibition-making and intimate in-person encounters with art. He is currently a curator in residence at HKS Hordaland Kunstsenter in Bergen, Norway.
IGNITION is an annual exhibition that features new work by students currently enrolled in the Studio Arts or Humanities graduate programs at Concordia University. It provides an up-and-coming generation of artists with a unique opportunity to present ambitious, interdisciplinary works in the professional context of a gallery with a national and international profile. Graduate students work directly with Gallery staff to produce an exhibition that places an emphasis on critical, innovative, and experimental work, engaging in the exploration and consideration of diverse media and practices. IGNITION is of interest to all students and faculty, the art community, and the general public.
Projects for IGNITION 18 selected by Eli Kerr, curator, writer and director of Parc Offsite, and Michèle Thériault, Director, Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery
ARTISTS AND WORKS
My practice spans animation, print media, sculpture, drawing, and sound. Through the crossing of media, I expand on recurring imaginaries from mythology, Latin American folklore, science fiction, and technology. Conjuring a range of characters and beings, I express embodied perspectives of a layered immigrant experience.
WORK
Mnemonics of Creations, 2022–2023
Ink on paper
Various dimensions
Courtesy of the artist
Mnemonics of Creations is an image-text-memory map that outlines a story in the past, present, and future. Telling a creation myth of the Boto, an Amazon pink river dolphin that transforms into a human under the full moon, I reflect on transformations in diaspora, migrations between worlds, and the forces of nature reclaiming the earth in the Anthropocene. Participants are invited to travel through image and text and make their own connections between frames.
EXPLORE
Based on what you see in de Aguiar Sanchez’s work, what qualifies an epic narrative? What events, protagonists, and other elements enter over the course of the story?
De Aguiar Sanchez defines his work as a mnemonic or memory device. What might be forgotten or overlooked that this sequence of works aims to recall and keep in mind? How does it work, how do you read it, and how would you relay or retell its content?
FOR MORE INFORMATION
“From Prints to Film Stills: An Interview with SMFA Alumni Vinicius Sanchez,” The Evolving Critic, October 14, 2015 https://theevolvingcritic.wordpress.com/2015/10/14/from-prints-to-film-stills-an-interview-with-smfa-alumni-vinicius-sanchez/
Working primarily in photography and film, my practice is based on processes of collecting, re-framing, and juxtaposing. Through my work I investigate the linguistics of place by emphasizing elements in our everyday surroundings that symbolize the ways that we relate to the landscape. My works are documents of transient places and objects, that contain a field of tension between man-made environments and natural processes.
WORK
Toys on the Rise, 2022–2023
Inkjet prints on archival paper, embroidery, and aluminum shelves
12.7 × 17.78 cm each
Courtesy of the artist
Central to Toys on the Rise is an ongoing investigation of the urban landscape as palimpsest. These still images are permanent documents of transient surfaces, containing recurring yet ephemeral shapes and elements that characterize the city. By altering the prints, I am further adding to the distorted character of the image, using the shapes in the image as patterns to create new layers.
EXPLORE
Think about the act of embroidery—piercing an image, getting in and under the photo, returning to the surface, and piercing again. Could this be thought of an extension of looking? A form of tracing? Writing? Or do you see something else at play?
Assembling photos of graffiti, De Boer presents a typology—a study of types—and a topography—a study of place. What forms of research does a collection like this enable? What information comes to the foreground? With its focused view, how does it shape your understanding of the larger urban environment?
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Artist’s website www.rixtdeboer.com
Across my projects, I touch upon collective histories related to textile craftsmanship, memories of lost domestic spaces, and acts of care, all through working with paper. This material, which I transform into threads, constitutes the focal point from which to explore these themes. From these paper threads I create spatial drawings, all the while constructing a textile-focused vocabulary shaped by a distinct lexicon that I carefully apply from the moment of conception.
WORK
Your memory is my breath, 2022
From the series Memory Lines
Ink and konnyaku on linen and Kozo paper, handmade paper threads and archival print
Various dimensions
Courtesy of the artist
This work captures the emotional connection arising upon hearing a happy memory recounted by my mother. It emerged from a photo of herself and her vivid memories of the colours of a dress she wore in her youth. From this chromatic evocation a creative impulse is drawn. I join this intimate family moment to other possibilities by symbolically giving life to a photographic detail that she drew my gaze to and that has captivated me since.
EXPLORE
Boisvert treats her paper with konnyaku powder to lend it fabric-like qualities. With this material transformation and approximation in mind, think about the everyday value of textiles and photographs, and the different ways they carry, transmit, and pass along knowledge.
Boisvert speaks of using a vocabulary specific to her practice. What words can you name connected to drawing and weaving? How might you use them to describe remembrance and connection?
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Beaudet, Pascale. “Transmission des arts textiles : Matrilinéaire et historique.” Vie des arts, no. 265 (Winter 2022) https://viedesarts.com/dossiers/dossier-ramifications-textiles/transmission-des-arts-textiles-matrilineaire-et-historique/
As a queer interdisciplinary artist with a Mormon upbringing, my work expands on the relationship between the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the LGBTQIA+ community. Through collaboration with my ex-Mormon parents, I explore the nuances of Mormon orthodoxy and practice that arise at this intersection. This partnership allows us to materially process our religious past while making space for reparative intergenerational conversations through organic, slow, and process-based work.
WORK
Sister Elder Charbonneau, 2016
Digital print
122 × 92.5 cm
“The Family: A Proclamation to the World” Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS) document, 1995, 2023
In collaboration with Guy Charbonneau
Colored pencil on linen and cotton
182 × 140 cm
Courtesy of the artist
This body of work stands as a revision of important Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints roles and documents that exclude or invalidate queer Mormon experiences. Through drawing, I replicated the homophobic church statement “The Family: A Proclamation to the World” on a panel of fabric woven by my father. I dissolved the pigment into the fibres with a solvent and pulled on each thread of the warp thus tightening the weave and shifting the image.
EXPLORE
Charbonneau explores processes of rejection and reconciliation as they navigate tensions and actualizations in identity. In what ways do you reckon with the internal and external forces that shape your sense of self?
In their collaborative woven work with their father, Charbonneau pulls apart the threads carrying a key Mormon text. In their portrait, they permit queerness to emerge from a strictly gendered position of power within the Church. Consider and compare the ways Charbonneau manipulates, but doesn’t discard, religious doctrines and representations.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
“Cet artiste transforme le symbolisme mormon en œuvres d’art,” Vice Video, 2018. https://video.vice.com/fr_ca/video/cet-artiste-transforme-le-symbolisme-mormon-en-oeuvres-dart/5b33b752be407750286e8411
In my practice I employ autotheory and autofiction as methods to consider neurodivergent experience. Specifically, my work focuses on contemporary screen issues, the surveillance state, and the transformative relationship between traumatic brain injury and sustained creative practice. Emerging from a generative method of re-viewing archives—private, public, institutional, and academic—my research and creation practice becomes a cumulative archive of its own where the work exists as artifact and trace of the process.
WORK
The key to remembering is forgetting who you are, 2023
Digital images, digital picture frames
30.5 x 206 cm
I’ve been meaning to tell you, 2023
Digital images, digital picture frames
108 x 138 cm
Courtesy of the artist
This work examines the face as locus of identity, particularly how we look at and read pictures, and as a means to access memory and our sense of self. By removing or reconstructing the face I interrupt the impulse to identify as the end-goal of image reading. The face becomes a portal to sensory and neurological experiences through a re-reading and re-expression of self.
EXPLORE
Where a blank or simplified face might tempt projection, allow Inksetter’s images to be portraits. What do you expect a portrait to perform and what arises from an encounter with those that do otherwise? What forms of identification is Inksetter making possible?
Inksetter’s backlit photos approximate screens. Think about the ways of looking and the manipulation that digital images permit. What does a bank of screens suggest compared to family photos mounted in a home?
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Artist’s vimeo showcase
https://vimeo.com/showcase/8171874
In my interdisciplinary practice, I draw parallels between the archival potential of textile objects and the memories that emerge from audible materials. Through interactive installations, I reflect on textiles as cultural markers and the sonic cadence of work rhythms modulated by traditions, politics, and environmental issues. My source materials are natural fibres and new media including electronics and sonic elements. My work engages with ecological urgencies in natural and digital ecosystems and underlines the materialization of the Anthropocene.
WORK
Web of Connections, 2022-2023
Digital prints, sound and thread
Outdoor in situ installation in collaboration with 44 larch trees (larix laricina)
with linen threads, lime paint, and clay
Various dimensions
Courtesy of the artist
Web of Connections is an in-situ installation featuring a network of lines creating geometric shapes in an organic, uneven landscape. In the gallery, photographs of this outdoor intervention are shown along with new geometries made with the same linen threads. Inspired by the inaudible voices of flora, my installation challenges simplistic perceptions within Western thought about non-human communications systems. The soundscape and installation illustrate webs of intersections, a mesh of interdependencies within natural ecosystems.
EXPLORE
Kesselring beckons us to listen to the seemingly inaudible voices of vegetation and the ambient noise from her weaving studio. How do soundscapes compare to landscapes? What ways of relating to and sensing the environment do they enable?
In Web of Connections, woven strings form rigid lines that contrast against the forest’s natural shapes, simultaneously highlighting interconnections and obscuring lines of sight. How can this interplay of opposites—soft and rigid, natural and unnatural, visible and invisible—inform an ecological world view?
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Artist’s website www.rytha-kesselring.com
My interventions consist in performing, installing, and displacing labour and failure in malleable time, body, mind, and space. In my study of super-performativity each project starts with interventionist performances that become source material for installations that together form a super-archive. These installations do not fix the moment of the performance in the usual documentation instead they deploy performativity as an opportunity to feel someone and something that is not there anymore.
WORK
Force and Form—Part III and IV, 2022
Installation with 4-channel video, 2-channel video, steel, vinyl, documents
12 min. 23 sec., 5 min. 33 sec., colour, sound
Courtesy of the artist
I work my Black disabled body against the presence of the police and military. The installation builds on the intertwined fear, frustration, and defiance in dealing with their existence in public space and the related discussions in private, in the media, and in the streets. In the copresence of bystanders/visitors, I explore the coexistence of contrasting elements. Super-presence of the body and dissociation of the mind. Pain and silence. Gaze and the absence of contact. Danger and slowness.
EXPLORE
Watch for the passersby in Lomami’s documentation and consider your role as a witness to her action. Compare the encounter on the street with its documentation presented in the gallery.
Survey the material and shape of Lomami’s structure. What properties do the screens have? How do they affect the image? What happens to the images of Lomami’s body when the screens meet to form a corner?
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Bechetoille, Marie. “Interview with Po B. K. Lomami.” La belle revue (2019)
https://labellerevue.org/en/thematic-dossiers/with-or-without-engagements/interview-with-po-b.-k.-lomami
My work is an ongoing series of attempts to reach. Drawing from phenomenology and the notion of experience as a reciprocal process, I look at distance and thresholds as sites of negotiation, risk, and potential transcendence. I work with mutually informing media, namely installation, sculpture, print and video, linking them through an underlying collage method.
WORK
I [wish to] Know Everything, 2023
Aluminum frame, digital inkjet prints on archival paper
51 x 41 cm
Courtesy of the artist
The image in the frame will be periodically changed by the artist over the course of the exhibition.
I [wish to] Know Everything deals with linguistic and spatial convergences. Ten photographs rotate in the gallery’s vitrine over the course of the exhibition capturing repeated encounters with a church vitrine—its signage commanding passersby to “Stop Suffering”—and the reflection of Séduction, a sex shop across the street. These transparent and reflective surfaces merge to disclose a paradox of desires that is further amplified by the window bisecting the gallery and library atrium.
EXPLORE
With her work Melanson positions herself and the viewers between two opposing sites, drawing attention to their unexpected convergence. Consider how Melanson accounts for the feeling of being caught between things. Positioned as a viewer outside the gallery space, how do you negotiate this feeling?
Melanson returned to and photographed the same location over a long period. Think of the many spaces that you return to. Reflect on how these spaces and your relationship to them have evolved over time. How do they overlap, and what does this reveal?
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Artist’s website allimelanson.com
Working in documentary photography, my practice stems from human interaction, walking, and contemplation.
Accessible, fast, and constant entertainment creates a dense but scattered cloud around our gaze. We walk the path of enjoyment, tumbling through stimuli, running out of time. Look up, breathe.
How does a subject operate when transposed to the photographic surface? Truth, memory— what is recorded, remembered, or archived?
WORK
Igual pero diferente, 2020-2023
C-Prints
Courtesy of the artist
Time and adolescent tale. Photographic research on boredom.
After the 2008 global crisis, a generation of young men in Spain realized that the abundant future would never arrive. Left impotent and facing a precarious professional market, a generation of teenagers spend their time wandering the streets doing nothing, bored.
Walk, talk, smoke.
Boredom may constitute the revolutionary space needed to stop and build a new reality based on the present instant.
EXPLORE
Through his photographs, Pérez Díaz documents states of idleness. In our current age of hyperstimulation, image-making and consumption is at once fuelled and exploited by boredom. What types of photos do you produce or view in moments of boredom?
Pérez Díaz combines three categories of images arranged into a grid—portraits, outdoor spaces, and ambiguous details—interspersed with blank spaces. What ways of looking and thinking does a grid display guide? Where else in the everyday do you encounter grids?
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Artist’s website https://pabloperezdiaz.com/
Working within my photo archive, I see it as an accumulated collage of time that presents endless possibilities for recontextualization. Through the process of showing and looking at photographs, disparate images gain the unintended ability to communicate. Yet this mode of photographic conversation is void of verbal expression. In my work, I investigate this limitation of photography.
WORK
Honestly, 2023
Diptych, digital inkjet prints on archival paper
127 × 96.52 cm each
Story-teller, 2023
Digital inkjet print, graphite, and oil paint on archival paper
138.43 × 111.76 cm
Looking at photographs, 2022
Video, 80 min.
Courtesy of the artist
Photos often play a trick on their viewer. In my work I aim to encourage reflection on the potential narratives that arise from recontextualization, and photography’s self-contradictory nature seen in its ability to communicate stories and its inability to discern fact from fiction. My work Honestly (2023) deconstructs the trick photography plays on its public. Story-teller (2023) investigates photographs as a story’s beginning and end, where the context of space and time is hidden outside the edges of the image.
EXPLORE
Note how Vijan marks up the margins in Story-teller. What do these additions bring to the images and how do they comment on the composition?
Vijan describes his practice as conversational. Watching Looking at photographs, how do you follow the dialogue between the images? What shape and tone does each exchange take?
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Artist’s Instagram www.instagram.com/parasvijan