May 1st – June 1st, 2024
Ifeoma U. Anyaeji, Colin Canary, Armando Cuspinera, Zahra Hosseini, Ayodele Mzilikazi, Elisabeth Perrault, Rebecca Ramsey, Andrés Salas and Nina Vroemen
The 19th edition of IGNITION features nine artists from Concordia’s Studio Arts and Humanities graduate programs whose works bear traces of lived realities and feelings of loss and longing. Drawing from personal and collective memories, they resort to multilayered processes and narratives to document, sift and weigh the relationships that anchor them to their surroundings.
A group of works explore visceral, embodied experiences obliquely through hybrid, abstracted and fragmented forms. Zahra Hosseini’s cyanotypes reimagine the artist’s own body through fractal deconstruction, capturing her experience of living with impairment. Made by pressing her oil-coated skin onto the paper, Goddess Figures (2023-2024) depicts a series of otherworldly beings with disjointed limbs bound together by the prints’ deep blue background. Involving a process of layering acrylic paint and printing techniques, Colin Canary’s paintings question the vaporous nature of memory. Family archives, grainy photographs he shoots on digital camera, and found imagery are transferred onto the picture plane creating repetitive, abstract and vaguely familiar motifs. The eerie quality of the works brings to mind a wistful presence beyond the murky surface. Similarly evocative, Elisabeth Perrault’s Ces géants qui se nourissent de soleil (2023-2024) is a ceramic installation consisting of five towering sunflowers. Usually recognized for its sturdiness and majestic proportions, the plant is shown here in a withered and devastated state. Voluntarily broken and depleted, Perrault’s fragilized flowers point to the necessity for vulnerability, impermanence, and regeneration.
Artists Nina Vroemen, Rebecca Ramsey and Andrés Salas open a reflection on the permeability and porosity of bodies, systems, and landscapes. In their mixed-media installation Lessen in Time (2023), Vroemen draws on personal history, research, fiction, and material inquiry to grapple with the unsettling world of nuclear waste and its management. Using low-fired permeable porcelain as a vessel, they imaginatively experiment with iodine, a substance essential to thyroid health and which, when consumed during a nuclear event, can temporarily block radioactive contamination. Ramsey meditates on the historical use of ceramic materials in spaces dedicated to sanitation, hygiene, and water supply, and the ways in which we interact with these environments on a daily basis. Her sculptures trace parallels between the circulatory and waste management systems of buildings and those of the body. Blurring the boundaries between inside and outside, container and contents, they remind us of the porous and leaky nature of our bodies. Silenciosa, Silenciada [Silenced, Silent] (2023) is a video essay and installation by Salas documenting his family farm in Cachipay, Colombia, and its transition from coffee farm to monocropping for floral foliage, which is less susceptible to pests. The artist interweaves the story of his grandfather, who succumbed to Chagas disease, an infection transmitted by an insect colloquially known as the ‘kissing bug.’ Salas chronicles the environmental disruption he has seen in the region during his lifetime and its frontline victims, those who work the land.
Artist Ayodele Mzilikazi similarly brings attention to the changes occurring in the place where he grew up and continues to live today in Exploring the HEIGHTS (2016-). This ongoing photographic series documents his rapidly changing neighbourhood of LaSalle Heights in the southwest of the island of Montreal. The residential zone is historically known for its diverse immigrant population, vast green spaces, tight-knit community, and affordable housing projects. In an effort to capture the idiosyncrasies of this place before the levers of gentrification fully reshape it, Mzilikazi captures the moments of joy, rest and mundanity that make up its social fabric.
Borrowing from ancestral West African weaving and hair threading techniques, Ifeoma U. Anyaeji uses yarns made from plastic bags and other discarded materials to make vibrant sculptures that honour her Igbo ethnic heritage. Her latest piece reinterprets the ceremonial rite of the King of Masquerades in Igboland, a male-dominated ritual which she infuses with traditionally feminine craft skills and ecological awareness. Reminiscent of gargoyles adorning cathedrals, the Diablitos (2024), or little devil figurines, found on each of Armando Cuspinera’s 100 volcanic ash-glazed tiles reflect upon the dissemination of religious or pagan imagery across cultures and territories. Lining them consecutively on the wall in a mosaic-like pattern, Cuspinera emphasises the gradual erosion and transformation of the symbolic or cultural significance of this motif as it undergoes displacement and finds new uses.
Deeply introspective, the works gathered in this exhibition consider our current moment by combing through different layers of time, histories, and traditions. The artists envision the world anew as they grapple with a multifaceted sense of loss and grief, favouring malleable and provisional materials that allow them to find their way through often unwelcoming terrains.
– Mojeanne Behzadi and Julia Eilers Smith
IGNITION est une exposition annuelle mettant en valeur le travail d’étudiant·e·s terminant leur maîtrise en Studio Arts et au doctorat en Humanities à l’Université Concordia. Cette manifestation est une occasion pour une génération d’artistes en devenir de présenter des oeuvres ambitieuses et interdisciplinaires dans le contexte professionnel d’une galerie au profil national et international. Ces étudiant·e·s travaillent en collaboration avec l’équipe de la Galerie afin de produire une exposition qui rassemble des oeuvres qui ont une dimension critique, innovatrice et expérimentale menant à une réflexion sur les médias et les pratiques de l’art. IGNITION est d’intérêt pour tous·tes les étudiant·e·s et leurs enseignant·e·s, la communauté artistique et le grand public.
Les projets de la 19e édition d’IGNITION ont été sélectionnés. par Mojeanne Behzadi, conservatrice au Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, et Julia Eilers Smith, conservatrice de recherche Max Stern à la Galerie Leonard & Bina Ellen.
ARTISTS AND WORKS
Diablitos, 2024
Stoneware, volcanic ash glaze, majolica glaze
12 x 12 cm each
Courtesy of the artist
Armando Cuspinera believes in the potential to change the world by proposing new ways of experiencing and understanding it. Recognizing the significance of objects and their influence on us, the artist seeks to redesign them in order to reshape our perception of the world. Cuspinera integrates both new technologies and primordial disciplines to develop a practice centered on an awareness of interconnectedness, infused with life, not detached from it. For him, life is shaped by the language of everyday objects, which serve as conduits to broader ecologies that we inhabit: other species, ecosystems, and natural forces.
Diablitos is a series of 100 handmade “devil tiles”, the majority of which feature ash glaze sourced from the Popocatepetl volcano. This project seeks to reclaim and redefine the notion of the devil on our own terms.
EXPLORE
The work is a reference to the religious colonization strategies employed in various territories, including the “Americas,” where the gods of local indigenous cultures were often demonized. Can you think of specific cultural symbols that were vilified by western colonial systems?
Consider the work’s medium, and the number of elements that constitute it. What does the tile format make possible, in your opinion? Think about the seriality of the work. What is repeated and what changes? What does this repetition imply?
Scarlet Silhouettes, 2023
Acrylic and toner transfer on wood panel
60.96 × 60.96 cm
Seeking Whom He May Devour, 2024
Acrylic and toner transfer on canvas
152.4 × 76.2 cm
Ashen Blossom, 2023
Acrylic and toner transfer on wood panel
91.44 × 76.2 cm
Goodbye, Norma Jeane, 2024
Acrylic and toner transfer on canvas
152.4 × 76.2 cm
Silver Silhouettes, 2023
Acrylic, spray paint and toner transfer on wood panel
121.92 × 91.44 cm
Courtesy of the artist
Working across mediums, Colin Canary explores the layers, transparencies, and fragmenting nature of memories and phenomena, such as déjà vu, familiarity with the unfamiliar, and recurring dreams. Culling from memory, dreamscapes, poetry, and film, he questions how memories dilate, devolve, and obscure over time, informing our subconscious and shaping our introspective narrative.
The paintings on display reflect on transformative experiences, identity, and the sense of longing. They offer an intimate glimpse into the exploration of liminal spaces, the subconscious and human experience. Converging collage, poetic prose, and surrealist dreamscapes, Canary’s imploding images ignite tension, submerging their context to reflect dissolving memories and transmuting experiences. Focusing on repair/resurrection of the fragmented and lost, Canary questions how we may learn from reliving and repeating. The decomposing statuettes within his works act as omens or cursors, pointing towards the next direction or reminding the viewer where they came from.
EXPLORE
Sifting through old prints pulled from his family photo albums and more recent personal photography, Canary includes traces of blurred faces, limbs, and mouldering flowers. In what ways does the artist trap these elements?
Consider how elements of personal histories are inscribed in the paintings. Can you spot the silhouettes of eyes, teeth, flesh, and hair between the hues of the different colors? What is the artist seeking to render, in your opinion?
Goddess figures, 2023-2024
Cyanotypes on paper
76.2 x 53.34 cm each
Courtesy of the artist
As a person with a disability, Zahra Hosseini focuses on bringing visibility to impaired bodies. Believing that the social model of disability isn’t enough to fully capture the individual experience of living with impairment, and as an artist with a unique body, she aims to highlight the diverse lifestyles of people sharing similar conditions.
Preferring the minority model of disability, which views the latter as a natural and neutral aspect of human diversity, this series conceptualizes the body as a matrix. It evokes personal narratives, while exploring the notion of bodily contact, resistance, and the complex realms of touch.
EXPLORE
By pressing her body directly onto paper and moving across its surface, the artist translates the moment of touch into imagery. Explore the ways in which Hosseini’s cyanotypes depict body movements and interact with spaces and surfaces.
Consider the impression technique used by the artist to make images. How does she engage with the surface of the paper? How does she capture the essence of touch and collision through direct movement on and with the surface? How does the artist challenge our perception and prejudice around disability?
Fresh Linen, 2024
101.6 × 152.4 cm
Football Kids, 2024
101.6 × 152.4 cm
Backyard Winter, 2024
101.6 × 152.4 cm
Late Night Shift, 2024
76.2 × 114.3 cm
The Running Kid, 2024
71.12 × 63.5
La rosée, 2024
101.6 × 152.4 cm
Untitled, 2024
203.2 × 304.8 cm
From the series Exploring the HEIGHTS, 2016—
Digital prints
Courtesy of the artist
Through photographic portraiture and by revisiting and re-photographing spaces, Ayodele Mzilikazi records the evolving nature of spatial environments within a broader narrative of documenting urban change and preserving local heritage. Mzilikazi invites viewers to appreciate the richness of everyday life and the intricate relationship between people and their surroundings. Situated within contemporary urban photography and documentary practices, his project aims to generate discussion on place-making, community identity, and the underlining dangers of gentrification.
Exploring the HEIGHTS is a body of work that captures one of Montreal’s most vibrant districts, highlighting its natural beauty, architecture, and the vitality of its community. The photographic project celebrates the neighbourhood’s unique character and the interaction between urban and natural elements.
EXPLORE
Mzilikazi went back again and again to the place where he spent his childhood, to take pictures over the years. How do the images engage in commemorating what can/will be erased through gentrification processes? What is he trying to inscribe in the viewer’s memory?
Reflect on your community spaces. What transformations can you observe in your own neighbourhood? How slow or quick have these changes been? What has been erased, and what remains?
Ces géants qui se nourrissent de soleil, 2024
Ceramic, silk, cotton, metallic wires
300 x 116 x 100 cm each
Courtesy of the artist
Elisabeth Perrault expresses herself through sculptural installations in which textiles and organic matter stand as surreal allegories. She uses manual techniques of material transformation, commonly referred to as crafts, as the foundation of her creative process. Expanding upon the traditional associations of fiber arts with femininity and domesticity, she infuses her works with a maternal bond and builds her universe in honour of women.
In Ces géants qui se nourrissent de soleil, Perrault presents a sculptural installation featuring several sunflowers made from ceramics and textiles. While flowers are often associated with fragility and frailty, sunflowers inspire strength and resilience. Akin to a second skin, the textile material that she uses reveals a certain intimacy, vulnerability, and sensitivity.
EXPLORE
By deliberately breaking the ceramic pieces that compose these majestic flowers, the artist challenges our perception of strength and fragility. The work is an invitation to embrace our own vulnerability as a source of beauty and transformation.
Survey the materials and structure of Perrault’s sculptures. Observe the layers that constitute the work. How do the different elements cohabitate? Consider the sturdiness of the soft transparent fabric. How does the artist push the boundaries of the materials she uses?
Subtle Body, 2023
Stoneware, glaze, steel armature, handmade tiles, foam board, grout, mortar
30.48 x 15.24 x 76.2 cm
Sink, 2023
Stoneware, glaze, chewing gum
38.1 x 45.72 x 53.34 cm
Water Feature, 2023
Stoneware, glaze, steel pole, pump, water, terrycloth, rust
43.18 x 50.8 x 152.4 cm
Porous Circuit, 2023
Stoneware, glaze, steel, cast bronze curtain hooks, terry cloth, rust
Various dimensions
Infinity Towel, 2023
Stoneware, glaze, terrycloth, silicone
20.32 x 60.96 x 38.1 cm
Courtesy of the artist
Inspired by ceramic forms that facilitate everyday hygienic rituals, At the Bottom of the Sink there is a Black Hole is a series of sculptures that reflect on the interiority of both bodies and buildings.
In the home and in the body, circulation is intrinsically connected to waste. Hygienic fixtures such as the wash basin, bathtub, and toilet, link the house to the larger city. Across this project, both house and body become metaphors for one another. Intimately intertwined, they reveal things about each other and act as models for understanding larger cycles of transformation and circulation in the natural world.
EXPLORE
Through the construction of ceramic sculptures, Rebecca Ramsey explores the relationship between the circulatory systems of waterways, mammalian bodies, and architecture. Oscillating between familiar and strange, her work merges bodily sculptures with architectural spaces. Both generous and defiant, these objects reflect on the paradox of being separate from, but also contained by the world.
What connections to the human body can you identify through these sculptures? Consider the openings that exist in each one. When are these sculptures hollow, and when are they full? When do they deny containment?
Silenciosa, Silenciada [Silenced, Silent], 2023-2024
Single-channel video, colour, sound, 20 min.; plinth, vase with Colombian flowers, board with a coffee shop price list, with the dollar values of the average daily wage of a coffee farmer in the region of Cachipay, Colombia
By exploring the modes in which emerging technologies influence and are influenced by cultural networks and vital ecosystems, Andrés Salas aims to make visible the ways in which extraction modulates our existence.
Silenciosa, Silenciada is a project that Salas created through re-visiting his family’s old coffee farm in the village of Cachipay, Colombia. The film unfolds as a double narrative: on one hand, it tells the story of the artist’s grandfather’s Chagas disease, and on the other, it explores the expansion of habitat of the ‘kissing bug’ and its correlation with monocropping practices in the region. The work portrays the artisanal and nearly forgotten processes of picking, peeling, and drying coffee beans, alongside the transition to monoculture through the cultivation and export of floral foliage in the region.
EXPLORE
Consider how the history of the artist’s family is related to the one of the spaces it inhabits—the farm, the land, the ecosystem. Explore the ways in which the personal and the political intertwine in this work. How does the artist move from the first person to tell a bigger story?
Think about your personal history. How deeply is it connected to the place you live or lived in?
Ije nke Mmanwu m [The journey of my masquerade], 2022-2024
Plasto-yarns (repurposed discarded non-biodegradable plastic bags), bottles, repurposed found fabrics, wood, twine, metal wires, rods, metal sheet, found objects, bubblies, sand
396.24 x 182.88 x 182.88 cm
Courtesy of the artist
Using a non-conventional eco-craft-art process, Ifeoma Anyaeji develops what she terms “plasto-art.” She intuitively experiments with discarded non-biodegradable plastic bags, transforming them into malleable yarn. By mixing her skills in the now obsolete Nigerian hair-craft known as threading (“Ikpa isi owu” in Igbo language) with traditional West African basketry and fabric weaving, Anyaeji reflects on the loss of such traditions and intertwines personal experiences and cultural influences. In her work, infused with local metaphors, she spontaneously creates conceptual, organic pieces that reference domestic architectural forms and spaces.
Ije nke Mmanwu m (The journey of my masquerade) is a colourful, organic, and conceptual sculpture that references the Igbo Ijele Masquerade, also known as the King of Masquerades in Igboland. Through its ceremonious appearance, the piece transports the viewer into the realm of Igbo culture’s philosophy and sacred creativity.
EXPLORE
The six feet wide by 13 feet tall sculpture is made from repurposed discarded plastic objects, wood and metal that have been transformed into plasto-yarns. Think of the scale of the artwork and its relation to the space it inhabits.
Consider the colours and shapes that constitute the work. What architectural forms and domestic structures does it reference? Think about the environmental tone of this sculpture. What does this tell you about the artist’s political position on value and utility?
Lessen in Time, 2023-2024
Single-channel video, colour, sound, 3 min. 13 sec.;
Installation with table, porcelain flasks, paper, liquid iodine, glass chemistry flasks, found objects, prints on acetates, lead sinkers, black duct tape
Various dimensions
Courtesy of the artist
Nina Vroemen’s research delves into the toxic features of the nuclear age and the persistent hauntings of militarized ecologies. The artist considers nuclearity as a hauntological matter that defies space and time. They are interested in the agency of materials and how art can activate an ecological way of thinking.
In 1993, a team of experts were assembled in New Mexico to develop a plan to advert humans 10,000 years in the future of the threat of nuclear waste disposal sites. Lessen in Time is an installation composed of a video projection sharing excerpts of the texts produced during this assembly, twenty-five porcelain beakers that weep iodine and an x-ray triptych. Each ceramic flask represents 80 of the 2000 nuclear bombs that have been detonated under the guise of military testing since 1945.
EXPLORE
Vroemen thinks about radiation as an invisible threat that passes through walls, permeates bodies and environments, and remains hazardous for over ten thousand years. Considering imperceptible toxicity, the artist urges us to think of our responsibility to face slow, systemic violence. How do you think nuclear waste and militarized ecologies affect our daily lives? Can you see their consequences, or are they invisible to the naked eye?
Note the different elements and the variety of material used by the artist. What properties do they have? How do they interact with each other? How does the agency of some materials used in the installation the installation reveal or conceal past and future nuclear threats?