PUBLIC ART: Billboard on Shaw by Ivanie Aubin-Malo
February 7, 2019 - March 31, 2019Billboard on Shaw curated by Neven Lochhead with the exhibition Public Syntax, presented in partnership with SAW Video, featuring Oposiyik [Performance Continuation] (2019) by Ivanie Aubin-Malo.
Public Syntax is an exhibition that highlights the distinct time-based practices and approaches of seven artists, as well as those participating in the Video in the Public Sphere Working Group.
Responding to Critical Distance’s mandate to advance curatorial inquiry and encourage collaborative frameworks, exhibition curator Neven Lochhead employs a conversational mode to form ‘syntactical’ relations between these various practices, identifying collective editing processes where the ‘sequence’ becomes a vector on which to group together. In the gallery and public spaces, artists in this exhibition generate affinities not through the question of where will we meet, but rather when will we occur?
Oposiyik [Performance Continuation] (2019) is Montreal-based Maliseet dancer and performer Ivanie Aubin-Malo’s first still image work. This photograph of a pink sticky note containing the Wolastoqey word “oposiyik” is positioned in relation to her 2017/18 performance Où sont les ancêtres? as a continuation of the gestures and movements that occur within that work. Deliberately left un-translated, this act of public labeling stems from the artist’s recent journey to Tobique, where she began a process of reclaiming her Wolastoqey language. At her initial meeting with language teacher Allan Tremblay, Aubin-Malo wrote the first Wolastoqey word that was spoken to her on a sticky note, and attached it to the object that it named. Six weeks later, words covered every surface.
Location and hours
Critical Distance Centre for Curators
180 Shaw Street, Artscape Youngplace, M6J 2W5
Admission is always free; building and gallery fully accessible
Google Map
Exhibition is on view February 7-March 31, 2019
Gallery hours are Wednesday–Friday, 12–6pm, Saturday–Sunday 11am–5pm, or by appointment through March 31, 2019.
We are open on holiday weekends unless otherwise noted on our visitor info page here
About the Curator
Neven Lochhead is an artist and curator based in Ottawa, where he has worked as Director of Programming at SAW Video Media Art Centre since January 2017, programming exhibitions and events at Knot Project Space. In 2016, Lochhead completed his MFA in Art Video from Syracuse University, a period in which he also worked as Technical Assistant for Urban Video Project at the Everson Museum of Art. Recent projects include a collaborative video I t Filled Our Minds Completely ( 2018) with artist and writer Gary Kibbins, a commissioned video and text for Modern Fuel’s Syphon publication about artist-run culture (2017), and working as camera operator and editor for Tanya Lukin Linklater’s video installation T he Treaty Is In The Body, commissioned by the Winnipeg Art Gallery (2017).
About the Artist
Ivanie Aubin-Malo honours her Maliseet roots through dance. Upon graduating from École de danse contemporaine de Montréal in 2014 she was mentored and taught the Fancy Shawl Dance by Curtis Joe Miller. She has collaborated with renowned artists Marie Belzil from Moment Factory, Tanya Lukin Linklater, DJ KXO, Buffalo Hat Singers, Moe Clark, Barbara Diabo, Alexandre Morin and Soleil Launière. She has also choreographed and performed in Ktahkomiq by Ondinnok and Mito-Jogos de Recusa by Marcos Nery, presented at the SESC Festival in Brazil. Ivanie’s most recent piece called MULA was presented at Tangente in Montreal in November 2018.
