This article was last updated on April 16, 2022
Canada: 
Oye! Times readers Get FREE $30 to spend on Amazon, Walmart…
USA: Oye! Times readers Get FREE $30 to spend on Amazon, Walmart…
Please join us for our first round of exhibitions for our 2014/2015 Programming year. There will be snacks, drinks and the artists will be in attendance.
Window Space
September 12th – October 10th
Track and Field, Meeting
Hudson Christie
Sports equipment can often be traced back to an explicitly violent context. In the case of javelin throwing, the equipment literally shares its form and title with a weapon used in hunting and war. In Christie’s Track and Field, Meeting installation, the javelin itself reclaims its ancient identity as a tool used for killing.
The sports arena disguises the violent origins of sports objects through safety regulations, bright colours, and a comforting sense of organization. When this superstructure is breached, we refer to it as tragedy, but recognize it as inevitability. Where weapons are being thrown around, an accident is bound to happen.
Main Space
September 12th – October 4th
Versioning
Curated by Brendan George Ko
Parker Kay, Connor Crawford, Michael Abel
Before we first landed on the moon in 1969, a reconnaissance spacecraft named Lunar Orbiter I travelled there in August 1966. Its mission was to take high-resolution images of potential landing spots for the Apollo moon missions to follow. Using 70mm film the small spacecraft automatically exposed for the moon’s surface, developed the film, scanned and faxed it back to Earth – over a distance of 384,400km. This event marked the first time in human history the moon was seen from somewhere other than Earth’s surface.
Hidden within the iconic images taken by the Lunar Orbiter I is an elaborate and advantageous process that shifted the way we see the moon in the sky. Versioning is an exhibition that examines how production processes can create new meaning into an object, image, or icon. Through the examination of three processes, Parker Kay, Connor Crawford, and Michael Abel exemplify shifts in production, and authenticity. Their work explores the impact process and technology can have on the cultural value of an object and icon.
Project Space
September 12th – October 4th
Reclaim: A Ceramic Site-Intervention
Danica Drago
The relationship of clay to its environmental origins is often removed from contemporary ceramic practice, where the commodification and convenience of making has dictated the material to serve a form or function, foreign to its elemental nature.
Drago’s project was conducted at Artscape Gibraltor Point, Toronto Island, as a response to that disconnect. The works were mainly produced without a conventional ceramics facility, using raw clay from Queens Quay, and bricks from the Leslie Street Spit. Through experimental processes, the final work was informed by natural factors of the island, and subjected to unmediated elements of risk, failure, and uncertainty.
External Space
(Located on OCADU campus in the Learning Zone, and featured on xpace.info)
September 9th – October 20th
Sugar Blessing
Leila Zahiri
“Life is a small share, like a cup of tea;And beside it,there is love, like some sugar cube;we must joyfully drink life with love” (Sohrab Sepehri)
In Iranian culture sugar holds many symbolic definitions, one of which is during the wedding ceremony. Within the ritual of the wedding, sugar is a material that is significantly connoted as “sweet love” and “sweet life”. Sugar Blessing examines the complex nature of women who are made to conform to the restrictive cultural tradition of an arranged marriage. From a young age throughout adulthood women are excluded from their own life choices, and need permission from their father, brother or the male in charge of the family. Women are expected to follow particular rules around courtship and marriage.
In Sugar Blessing Leila Zahiri uses two sugar cones as signifiers of sweetness, pleasure, and power to exemplify the opposing implications of the objects used during an Iranian wedding ritual. Zahiri is blessing herself by grinding the sugar cones above her head referring to the particular sugar blessing tradition. This body of work visualizes the cultural and gender tension within traditional, prejudice in societies and creates a visceral response and empathy in the viewer.
Image Credit: Hudson Christie Left, Danica Drago Right
Be the first to comment