
PUBLIC ART: Billboard on Shaw by Nadya Kwandibens
April 21, 2023 - June 3, 2023Billboard on Shaw co-presented by Native Women in the Arts and Critical Distance in partnership with Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival and Partners in Art, featuring Shiibaashka’igan: Honouring the Sacred Jingle Dress by Nadya Kwandibens.
This outdoor component of the exhibition Materialized presents an image by newly-appointed Toronto Photo Laureate Nadya Kwandibens. Photographed at the Naotkamegwanning roundhouse, the portrait depicts three Anishinaabekwewag sharing a candid moment of laughter, subverting the “stoic Indian” trope that characterizes historical portraits by non-Indigenous photographers. It is said that laughter is medicine—this image brings together that energy with the healing power of the jingle dress.
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PUBLIC ART: Billboard on Shaw by Jake Kimble
March 16, 2023 - April 16, 2023Billboard on Shaw presented by Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival in partnership with Capture Photography Festival and Critical Distance, featuring Grow Up #4 by Jake Kimble.
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PUBLIC ART: Billboard on Shaw by Morgan Melenka and Megan Gnanasihamany
October 6, 2022 - November 26, 2022Billboard on Shaw presented by Critical Distance, featuring Burtynsky Suite by Morgan Melenka and Megan Gnanasihamany, 2022.
Burtynsky Suite is composed of four reproductions of Carrara Marble Quarries, Cava di Calagrande #2 by the Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky. The reproductions range in degrees of abstraction, but each, unlike the seemingly cool distance of the original photograph, contain the rough edges of the process of translation and the clear marks of a subjective artistic rendering.
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PUBLIC ART: Billboard on Shaw by Adrià Julià
August 21, 2022 - September 17, 2022Billboard on Shaw presented by Critical Distance, featuring A Very White Flower, by Adrià Julià, 2022.
A Very White Flower references Julià’s ongoing interest in the history of production, consumption and expansion of popcorn in modern colonial history. The image of a single kernel of popcorn functions as a prompt to consider Julià’s reflections on the historical and socioeconomic intricacies of the global corn industry and its relationship to Mexican culture and the popularization of popcorn in the United States after the Great Depression, especially in regards to popcorn’s connection to cinema.
A Very White Flower is presented in the context of Place Settings (curated by Noa Bronstein), a large-scale, durational project that considers how food functions to connect and disrupt.
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