Whyishnave Suthagar
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.
Themes she explores in her work include ancient myth, dreams, memory and the subconscious mind. More specifically she uses the ideas found in ancient myth to understand the world we live in today. Her work is meant to access her present surroundings using a lens of the past. As a second generation Tamil-Canadian, Whyishnave often draws from her own heritage, being of a family who immigrated to Canada from SriLanka during the civil war of 1983-2009. Through her art, Whyishnave visually assess the juxtaposition of her upbringing in a home with Tamil/Eastern beliefs systems, embedded int h landscape of Canada with respective Western values.
Whyishnave has received her BFA from McMaster’s School of the Arts, was a part of the 14.0 Remix Project, and is presently a tenant in the HXOUSE Re-Entry program. To date she has shown her work at the McMaster Museum of Art, MUCH Music HQ, the Gladstone Hotel, Manifesto TO, the Drake Hotel, Stackt Market, MOCA, Artscape Daniels Launchpad, Toronto Distillery District, Gerrard India Bazaar BIA and the Bradley Museum. She has also helped create community-based art and design projects in collaboration with STEPS Public Art, the Daniels Corporation and SickKids.
Image Caption: Whyishnave Suthagar, Interwoven Dimensions, 2020. Nuit Blanche Prototype Installation for Toronto Arts Council. Courtesy the artist.
Links
EVENT: Life Cycles: Live Performance by Whyishnave Suthagar
May 28, 2022 - May 28, 2022Life Cycles
Live Performance by Whyishnave Suthagar
401 Richmond Courtyard
(or in CDCC Gallery – 401 Richmond Building, Suite 122 – in case of rain)
May 28, 2022
1:30 PM EST
Click here to access the Zoom link for the live streaming of this event.
Life Cycles is a live performance that will depict a mother and daughter engaging in the passed tradition of kolam making. A kolam is an ancient form of drawing in the Hindu religion created using rice, sand, flour – something ephemeral – as these drawings are to be washed away after the occasion that they were created for has ended. Kolams often reference mandala imagery; which are spiritual symbols in Hinduism representing the expanding universe. Life Cycles is an interactive performance, where viewers will be able to collaborate with the artists as they engage in the ritual of kolam making. An artist talk will follow the performance.
This performance is presented in part of our current exhibition OF THE SACRED, curated by Noor Alé and Claudia Mattos (AXIS Curatorial).
Find out moreEVENT: OF THE SACRED: Opening Reception
April 23, 2022 - April 23, 2022OF THE SACRED testifies to the survival of personal beliefs, spiritual traditions, and religious practices in the face of colonialism and migrations. In their practices, artists Farah Al Qasimi, Kaya Joan, Bea Parsons, Yelaine Rodriguez, and Whyishnave Suthagar trace cultural inheritances of faith, lineages of intergenerational knowledge, and the syncretism of beliefs that emerge in times of turbulent change and upheaval.
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EXHIBITION: Of the Sacred
April 22, 2022 - June 4, 2022Curated by AXIS Curatorial (Noor Alé and Claudia Mattos) and featuring Farah Al Qasimi, Kaya Joan, Bea Parsons, Yelaine Rodriguez, Whyishnave Suthagar, Of the Sacred is an exhibition that gathers a selection of artists who examine the divine through a highly personal lens, attesting to belief as a means of unearthing histories of colonialism, translocation, and individual circumstance.
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