Critical Distance PROGRAMMING OF THE SACRED: Opening Reception

Noor Alé is a curator, art historian, and writer whose exhibitions and roles span international contemporary art institutions. Her practice delves into the intersections of contemporary art with geopolitics, cosmologies, and land relations pertaining to the Global Majority. She has held positions at The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Abu Dhabi Project, New York; and Art Dubai.

AXIS is a socially-engaged curatorial collaborative composed of Noor Alé and Claudia Mattos. In their joint curatorial practice, Alé and Mattos are committed to producing exhibitions, projects, and screenings of contemporary art that respond to the pressing social, cultural, and political conditions of our time.

Farah Al Qasimi (b.1991, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates; lives and works in Brooklyn and Dubai) works in photography, video, and performance.

Kaya Joan is a multi-disciplinary Afro-Indigenous (Vincentian, Kanien’kehá:ka with relations from Kahnawá:ke, Irish, Jamaican) artist born, raised and living in T’karonto, Dish with One Spoon treaty territory. Kaya’s work focuses on healing, transcending linear notions of time, blood memory and relationship to place.

Bea Parsons is a printmaker, drawer, and painter, originally from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, now living and working in Montreal. Her practice has primarily focused on black and white monoprints and, most recently, coloured pencil drawings on archival paper.

Born in 1990 in the Bronx, where she lives and works today, Yelaine Rodriguez is an Afro-Dominican United Statesian artist, educator, curator, and cultural organizer. Rodriguez conceptualizes wearable art, sculptures, and site-specific installations drawing connections between Black cultures in the Caribbean and the United States captured through photography and video documentation.

Whyishnave Suthagar is a new media artist & graphic designer from the GTA. Her practice focuses on creating site specific installations using projection, light design, thread based weavings and original soundscapes. Her works play with light, space and sound to create immersive meditative experiences.