February 2 – March 3, 2024

The Exposure Photography Festival is pleased to announce its twentieth-anniversary programme happening in Alberta in February. Exposure 2024 promises to be an expansive and exciting festival edition with exhibitions presented in galleries, museums, local businesses and outdoor locations in Calgary, Banff, Canmore, Crowsnest Pass, Edmonton, Peace River & Red Deer. This year’s exhibition programme shares a wide range of narratives, subjects, practices, and explorations of the photographic medium drawing attention to Calgary and Alberta as the site of an active, growing, creative community in the field of photography.

Exposure’s curated exhibitions, the International Open Call and Emerging Photographers Showcase, will be hosted at Contemporary Calgary (February 2 – March 3), a significant visual arts destination dedicated to modern and contemporary art. The exhibitions present a broad range of works, including photocollage, conceptual photography, politically engaged practices and works that embrace social and individual experience, as well as visual explorations of identity and personal narratives.

The Exposure 2024 International Open Call exhibition will feature the work of photographers and visual artists based around the world who incorporate, celebrate, or challenge the photographic medium within their practices. Selected by the Exposure Team and Lillian O'Brien Davis, curator and writer based in Toronto, the exhibition will present the works of contemporary practitioners based in Brazil, Canada, Ethiopia, Morocco, Slovakia, United Kingdom, and United States.

The Exposure 2024 Emerging Photographers Showcase celebrates the rich talent of early-career practitioners who are based in the province. Selected by the Exposure Team and Janine Windolph (Atikamekw/Woodland Cree), Director of Indigenous Arts at Banff Centre Arts and Creativity, the exhibition provides an insight into our dynamic and growing community of fine art photographers here in the region.

The Exposure 2023 Emerging Photographer of the Year award exhibition will also be hosted at Contemporary Calgary (February 2 – March 3). This prestigious award provides an Alberta-based emerging artist with a platform to show their work while furthering their professional practice. Exposure’s Festival Manager, Bethany Kane, mentors and supports the artist in developing their vision in the best possible way. Selected by Tiffany Jones, Publisher of Overlapse, the award recipient Elyse Longair will be presenting a solo collage exhibition during the 2024 festival.

For the seventh consecutive year, Exposure has brought the Flash Forward Incubator Program to Alberta, in partnership with the Toronto-based The Magenta Foundation. The Flash Forward Incubator Program exhibition will feature the work of students from the 2023/24 participating schools: Westmount Charter School in Calgary and Eastglen School in Edmonton.

Exposure Fence: People & Place, is an outdoor exhibition at Calgary’s Olympic Plaza, presented in partnership with the Chinook Blast Festival. Curated by Beth Kane, People & Place presents the work of visual artists based in Treaty 6 and 7 territories, also known as Southern Alberta. The work and perspectives of this dynamic group of exhibiting artists provide us with both celebratory and critical visual insights regarding the complex, intertwined relationships between people and place within these traditional territories. In addition to activating public space in Calgary’s downtown core, the exhibition promotes wider understandings and increased access to the art of photography and visual storytelling, amplifying impactful narratives and connecting artists to a wide audience.

EXPOSURE 2024 INTERNATIONAL OPEN CALL

The Exposure 2024 International Open Call exhibition features the work of photographers and visual artists based around the world who incorporate, celebrate, and/or challenge the photographic medium within their practices. The Exhibiting Artists have been selected by the Exposure Team and juror Lillian O'Brien Davis, curator and writer based in Toronto.

Exhibiting Artists are Justin Carney (USA), Pippa Healy (UK), M'hammed Kilito (Morocco), Patricia Krivanek (Ethiopia), Kristiina Lahde (Canada), Christina Leslie (Canada), Gui Marcondes (Brazil), Lisa McCarty (USA), Martin Miklas (Slovakia), Rachel Nixon (Canada), Christine Osinski (USA), Molly Steels (Canada), Han Sungpil (South Korea / Canada), Teiji Wallace-Lewis (Canada) & Tom Woodroffe (UK).

For more information on our exhibiting artists please see Exposure Festival’s website.

EXPOSURE 2024 EMERGING PHOTOGRAPHERS SHOWCASE

The Exposure 2024 Emerging Photographers Showcase exhibition presents the work of fifteen photographers and visual artists based in Treaties 6, 7 and 8 Territories in Alberta. The exhibition celebrates the rich talent of early-career practitioners who are based in the province while providing an insight into our dynamic and growing community of fine art photographers here in Alberta. The Exhibiting Artists have been selected by the Exposure Team and juror Janine Windolph (Atikamekw/Woodland Cree), Director of Indigenous Arts at Banff Centre Arts and Creativity.

Exhibiting Artists are Masoud Alipourian, Scott Christensen, Brady Fullerton, Nozomi Kamei, Taraneh Khodai, Santosh Kumar Korthiwada, Ramsey Kunkel, Kim Payne, Amir Salehi, Stasia Schmidt, Maksim Tataev, Shane Thompson, Tiffany Thomson, Christina Yao & Wynn Yunn.

For more information on our exhibiting artists please see Exposure Festival’s website.

EXPOSURE 2023 EMERGING PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR:
ELYSE LONGAIR, PICTURING THE INFRATHIN

Exposure’s 2023 Emerging Photographer of the Year award recipient Elyse Longair will be presenting her solo show Picturing The Infrathin.

Marcel Duchamp suggests that the immeasurable gap, “the possible implying becoming — the passage from one to the other takes place in the infrathin”. Elyse Longair’s exhibition, Picturing the Infrathin, evokes Duchamp’s concept of the infrathin through collage with a specific focus on her flat seamless aesthetic where the thin space or gap between image fragments approaches (in)visibility. Each collage is created similarly: embracing subtly and carefully composed using a limited number of image fragments from her archive of popular knowledge source material, predominantly National Geographic magazine images from the 70s, 80s and 90s. Her work is durational, as Longair may wait years to find a near seamless and logical image match. In this infrathin space she creates, the viewer can imagine freely the possibility of the image, and the roles of picture making and imagination.

EXPOSURE FENCE: PEOPLE & PLACE

The Exposure Photography Festival presents EXPOSURE FENCE: PEOPLE & PLACE at Calgary’s Olympic Plaza, in partnership with Chinook Blast! Festival.

Curated by Beth Kane, People & Place presents the work of four visual artists based in Treaty 6 and 7 territories, also known as Southern Alberta. The work and perspectives of this dynamic group of exhibiting artists provide us with both celebratory and critical visual insights regarding the complex, intertwined relationships between People & Place within these traditional territories.

Exposure’s free outdoor exhibition activates an accessible public space, enabling new opportunities for increased engagement with the art of photography and visual storytelling. Working with our exhibition partners, we amplify impactful visual narratives, offer novel insights, and connect artists to diverse audiences.

Location: Olympic Plaza (outdoors)
Open: 24/7 from February 2-19
Access: Location is wheelchair accessible. Exhibition is child-friendly.

Supported by

Justine Bui
Rosy and Fair

January 4 - February 4, 2024

Using bright colours and eye-catching displays, Rosy and Fair replicates how products are advertised to consumers within the beauty industry, no matter how harmful the product may be. This pop-up shop installation explores how playful marketing can hook customers and, in turn, sell them items that perpetuate harmful myths and emotional harm, while even causing negative physical damage.

Resultantly, Rosy and Fair brings forth the impacts of colourism in Asian communities while mobilizing knowledge about how our varying skin tones can change the course of our lives. As this discrimination continues to impact each generation, we must challenge the harmful notions of beauty to live happier and healthier lives without judgment.

My First Professional Exhibition (MFPE 2023) is generously presented by ContemporaryCalgary. Organized by the Department of Art and Art History, University of Calgary. With special thanks to Professor Heather Leier, Dr. Joelle Welling, and Dr. George and Susannah Kurain.

About the Artist

Justine Bui (she/her)

Justine Bui is a Chinese-Vietnamese artist who focuses on colourism in Asian communities.

She is a graduate from the University of Calgary and a multidisciplinary artist who uses photography, sculpture, and installation to raise awareness about how colourism still exists within our present-day society.

Justine’s contemporary artworks counteract the historical notions of skin lightening that impacts each generation. Utilising colourism research within the art mobilises knowledge about the physical, mental, and social effects from the products and practices. Through her creative practice, Justine strives to change the outlook of how Asian individuals view and value their own skin colour.

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Artists:
Anna Berry, Erik Benjamins & Finnegan Shannon, Atanas Bozdarov, Hannah Bullock, Bob Flanagan & Sheree Rose, Andrew Gannon, Darrin Martin, Dylan Mortimer, Liz Nurenberg, Dominic Quagliozzi, Aislinn Thomas, Alice Wong & Georgia Webber.

How do contemporary disabled artists breathe? How is breathing an athletic act, a dyad of push-pull, a feat of endurance, a political horizon? This exhibition is inspired by the scholarship of Jean-Thomas Tremblay, and his new book Breathing Aesthetics (2022). In Tremblay’s book, he uses the work of contemporary artists such as Bob Flanagan to support his scholarship around the complexities of breathing. I take Tremblay’s work as a jumping-off point to incorporate other contemporary disabled artists who illustrate Tremblay’s “breathing aesthetics” in new form and function. Breathing as it relates to disabled bodies might stereotypically be associated with “spasmic bodies” – sharp inhales, gasps, gurgling, coughs, and laboured muscle contraction, and breathing aided by technological apparatuses. Breathing is also greatly stigmatized through black bodies and police violence, and the literal physical struggle beset by our pandemic era. In the context of this exhibition, I’m interested in exploring how contemporary disabled artists make breathing more dynamic and less so dangerous; how does breathing offer other physical, metaphorical and epistemological opportunities to recast the disabled body with a range of “benign respiratory variations”? The exhibition aims to imagine breathing, and breathlessness, as a productive cause for giddiness, a sensation for whirling, and a tendency for staggering. 

Installation view, Resistance & Respiration. November 30, 2023-April 14, 2024, Contemporary Calgary. Photos by Victoria Cimolini.

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Jennifer Marman & Daniel Borins
Three Dimensions

October 19 - March 17, 2024

Three Dimensions is an exhibition showcasing the multidisciplinary art practice of Jennifer Marman & Daniel Borins. The show features three installations: Balancing Act, THX2020, and ABCD, which combine painting, sculpture, kinetics, interactivity, virtual reality, and video.

Balancing Act consists of a user-controlled large-scale claw crane game where participants can stack sculptural components and create ad-hoc compositions. Accompanying the installation are paintings depicting various combinations of the sculptures. THX2020 is an interconnected installation that combines paintings, narrative video, and an interactive headset that responds to bio-feedback by moving shapes on video screens. ABCD is a multidimensional installation incorporating diverse mediums, including AI and VR that deftly juxtaposes physical and virtual realities while exploring otherworldly absurdity.

Taken together, Three Dimensions emphasizes viewer participation and explores themes of authenticity, agency, and the digital age through performativity and interactivity.  Like many of their previous works, the installation references high and popular culture, combining science fiction, politics, and current events in a pop-minimalist setting where symbols are equalized in hierarchy. For Marman and Borins, the exhibition aims to disrupt traditional notions of reality – whether authentic or synthetic – and present dimensions that challenge the viewer’s perception.  With an emphasis on engagement, the artists prompt contemplation around visual language, mass media, consumerism, and the ways in which images circulate in the information age.

About the Artists

Jennifer Marman and Daniel Borins have been making large-format sculpture, paintings, mixed media, installation, and electronic art since 2000. Their projects extend through galleries, museums, and into public space.

In the studio, Marman and Borins work in a materials-focused practice, combining conceptual art with visual appeal – where they produce complex projects that tell stories, often conceiving of exhibitions in an intertwined and narrative-based perspective. Their artworks are situated within popular culture, examining questions of authenticity, while simultaneously referring to aspects of both modern and recent history through speculative narratives and the effects of the digital age.

Marman and Borins have lectured at galleries and institutions both nationally and internationally, including University of Calgary, Tulane School of Architecture, and SOMA in Mexico City.

Jennifer Marman is a graduate of the University of Western Ontario. Daniel Borins is a graduate of McGill University. Marman and Borins both graduated from the Ontario College of Art and Design, where they started their collaboration.

Marman and Borins’ work is in the collections such as the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Art Gallery of Hamilton, the University of Toronto, York University, and the City of Toronto. They are represented by Cristin Tierney in New York, where their third solo show with the gallery opened in June 2023.

Marman and Borins' work is in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada, The Art Gallery of Ontario, and the Art Gallery of Hamilton.

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Sara Lydia Tuell
Waveforms

October 5 - December 14, 2023

In this exhibition of print and installation work, Tuell presents her thesis work as a Master of Fine Arts candidate at the University of Calgary. 

The artworks explore abstract concepts in quantum physics through perceptual experience. An interactive installation using polarized film in the grand windows of Bow View Hall encourages the viewer to investigate their relationship with the quantum world. Meanwhile, on the ground floor, Tuell’s large-scale print work functions more like a Rorschach Test, enveloping and inviting the viewer to impress their own consciousness upon the work.

Tuell’s work intends to inspire curiosity and promote integration of the arts and sciences as a means of developing human knowledge, understanding and problem-solving in an age that demands creative solutions. The viewer need not be savvy to the complexities of quantum mechanics in order to discover and appreciate the beauty of light and nature: all that is required is to be a curious observer of the world.

About the Artist

Sara Lydia Tuell

Sara Lydia Tuell is an artist and engineer from the United States currently living in Calgary. She earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology in 2016 and worked as a machinery engineer until 2020. In 2021, Tuell began work as a Master of Fine Art student at the University of Calgary.

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Geoff McFetridge
These Days Are Nameless (The Drive, The River, And Hills)

September 20 - October 29, 2023

These Days Are Nameless is an exhibition of Geoff McFetridge’s three short videos from 2020 and the gouache works on paper used to animate them. The sounds and moving images included consider the curiosities of the human condition at the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic. Where are we going? How do we get there? Does it matter?

 In his typical minimalistic style, McFetridge draws on the familiar and the timeless- sounds of the city and of nature, sounds that transport you to different places and times. We hear, and we also see moving colours, shifting faces, flowing water, a dog barking or a cricket chirping, a pause, a thump, gentle music, static.

Geoff McFetridge’s works invite you to ponder on movement and the in-between while focusing on the specificities of the ordinary and mundane.

CIFF TRAILER | Geoff McFetridge: Drawing a Life 

A documentary about the Alberta-born artist "Geoff McFetridge: Drawing a Life" will open the Calgary International Film Festival on September 21.

About the Artist

Geoff McFetridge (he/him)

Throughout his long and diverse career, Geoff McFetridge has worked across a vast array of mediums from poetry to animation, graphics to sculpture, textile and wallpaper to paintings. McFetridge has exhibited in galleries worldwide including Louis Buhl, Detroit (2022); Gallery Target, Tokyo (2023); Cooper Cole, Toronto (2021); Half Gallery, New York (2021); V1 Gallery, Copenhagen (2023); Blum and Poe, Los Angeles (2020);  PlayMountain, Tokyo (2013); Heath Gallery, Los Angeles (2011) and New Image Art, West Hollywood (2006). Included in the Beautiful Losers exhibition (curated by Aaron Rose and Christian Strike) which debuted at CAC, Cincinnati in 2004, he has, also, been featured in exhibitions at the Walker Art Center, Vancouver Art Gallery, Yale University Art Museum, Contemporary Calgary and Geffen Contemporary at MoCA Los Angeles. As a designer, he has worked extensively with brands including Hermès, Vans, Undefeated, Patagonia & Apple. Recently he has made public works for LA Metro & SOFI Stadium LA. Dan Covert's documentary on his oeuvre, Geoff McFetridge: Drawing a Life, came out to critical acclaim in 2023. Winner of the 2016 Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian National Design Award and the AIGA Medal in 2019, McFetridge received his BFA from the Alberta College of Art & Design and an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts.

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(Re)Imagining Inclusion
Community-based art with racialized immigrant women artists

Artists: Medina Ardic, Firuze Avci, Melika Forouzan Pour, Shiyao Fu, Tayebe Joodaki, Maryam Mahdavian

Research and facilitation by Nurgül Balaç Rodriguez

(Re)Imagining Inclusion is a community-based art project, engaging individuals who have experienced re-emerging into an art community. This project investigates the diverse communities of artists who are members of invisible/racialized minority groups in the city of Calgary and focuses on the role of racialized women artists when confronted with cultural gatekeeping.

This is a project in which seven racialized immigrant women artists are invited as participants to share their immigration stories in their own words and artworks. They (six of them) made one collaboration with the facilitator and one individual work. Using the format of an interview to facilitate a process of self-expression and representation, this project allowed participants to reflect on their experiences. The art tells their stories.

The project is initiated and facilitated by Nurgül Balaç Rodriguez, artist and educator; and currently a PhD student at the University of Calgary.

Re-Imagining Inclusion allowed both the researcher Nurgül Balaç Rodriguez and the artists to realize the importance of community-based art in developing and maintaining public interest in othering and belonging. The relationship between the immigrant artists, the researcher, and the art organization will strengthen the ties of the diverse and growing arts community in Calgary.ill strengthen the ties of the diverse and growing arts community in Calgary.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Medina Ardic

My name is Medina Ardic. Originally, I am from Baku, Azerbaijan. I graduated from Baku State University as a Geographer and later pursued education as an accountant. Though my work life wasn't related to art, I have always been interested in it.

My first encounter with Ebru Art happened in Baku, Azerbaijan, in 2004 during an exhibition of Turkish artists. I was drawn to the pictures created using the Turkish water marbling technique. They looked distinct from other paintings, exhibiting a captivating lightness, tenderness, and sensitivity.

In 2009, my family and I moved to Ankara, Turkey. It was in December of the same year that I began taking classes from Ebru artist Ms. Hulya Ozyildiz. I learned the traditional techniques and patterns of Turkish Marbling Art, Ebru. Turkish Marbling Art Ebru involves creating colorful patterns by sprinkling natural earth pigment dyes on viscous water, which is then transferred onto paper.

In 2011, we relocated to Canada, and I brought along some art supplies and materials for Ebru. This gave me the opportunity to continue working with Ebru art. I actively participated in workshops, festivals, and art exhibitions. Since 2015, I have been teaching Ebru in the Turkish Canadian Cultural Association of Calgary.

Firuze Avci

Firuze Avci is a self-taught Turkish ceramic artist based in Calgary, AB. After graduating in Sociology in 2016, she discovered her love for ceramics with wheel throwing and decided to infuse her art with themes close to her heart, such as feminism, immigration, and empathy. She practiced traditional pottery with master potters and then developed techniques in ceramics, such as slip casting, mould-making, glaze-making, and sculpting. Utilizing her skills, Firuze creates artwork which carries traces of her thoughts about social dynamics and societal norms. For the past 1.5 years, Firuze has been living in Calgary, where she established her own craft-focused studio. She seeks to expand her artistic horizons, collaborate with local artists, and engage with the cultural climate of the city.

Melika Forouzan Pour

Melika Forouzan Pour is an Iranian multidisciplinary artist living in Calgary, Canada. She graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts and Master of Art in Photography from the University of Tehran, Iran. She took her second Master of Fine Arts in Painting from the University of Calgary. In her works which are mainly based on the concept of place attachment and memory, she constantly shifts between photography, painting and printmaking to explore identity and a sense of belonging through her connections to places and referring to personal and shared memories. 

Her academic background in photography and her vast experiences in painting have helped her to combine the visual language of photography and painting in her artworks. 

She has published articles in the field of family photography, collective memory, and the role of personal photos in shaping collective memories and social history in Iranian Art Journals.

Shiyao Fu

Shiyao Fu is an emerging visual artist with an interdisciplinary practice, involving painting, ceramic, sound, text-based art, and installation. She grew up in China and now resides in Mokinstsis, also known as Calgary. Her work concentrates on issues of identity, borders, language and translation. She explored individuals' place attachment in her sound installation. “Place” is a major element in her artworks. Her experience in early childhood of going back and forth between two cities made it more difficult for her to identify with these two places. Shiyao received her BFA (with Distinction) from the Alberta University of the Arts in 2018. After graduation, she has been working in contemporary art galleries in Beijing and Calgary to apply for her Canadian permanent resident status. Shiyao has recently participated in the Calgary Allied Arts Foundation artist residency program and is pursuing her MFA study.

Tayebe Joodaki

Tayebe Joodaki was born in Iran, a country with a long history in art and culture. When she was a little girl, her family recognized Tayebe’s talent in painting, but they did not favour her becoming an artist in the future; nonetheless, she did not give up and tried to attend painting classes during summer breaks. When her parents saw her talent and interest in painting, they started supporting her. Even though Tayebe participated in university exhibitions and was recognized for her talent, she only started painting seriously after graduating in Agricultural Engineering. She learned realistic painting under the tutelage of famous and skillful artists in Iran. She decided to start teaching art and chose to be a full-time artist. She was recognized as a successful and talented artist within a short time.

Tayebe immigrated to Canada in 2015 and received the New Canadian Artist Award from the Mayor of Calgary, Naheed Nenshi, in 2016. Also, she was honoured as a  Finalist in the 22nd Annual Immigrants of Distinction Awards (2018). One year later, in 2019, she received the 30th International Artavita online art Contest Award. She was invited to publish her paintings in the book “Current Masters” and submit her work to international galleries in New York such as  Artexpo. Tayebe has worked as an accomplished instructor with the Calgary Board of Education, Kerby Centre, Swinton‘s Art, YYC/LRT public artwork/studio, and the “Paint Ur Art Out” Gallery.

Maryam Mahdavian

My name is Maryam Mahdavian. I was born and raised in Iran. At the moment, I am a PhD student in Educational Research at the University of Calgary. In addition, I have been drawing cartoons since 2004. I believe that cartoons as a form of visual art goes beyond amusement and laughter and can act as a powerful communication tool to convey disparate concepts to people and affect their attitudes. Most of my cartoons depict social and political issues from a critical lens. 

ABOUT THE FACILITATOR

Nurgül Balaç Rodriguez is an artist with an interdisciplinary practice, and a second year PhD student at Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary. She has an active individual practice of disciplines and media including porcelain, installation, handmade paper, printmaking, three-dimensional pieces, and more recently socially engaged and collaborative projects. Her work is social, political, and personal with a focus on issues of immigration, diasporas, borders, and cultures. She explores becoming a diasporic individual during identity formation within a new culture. Nurgül settled in Calgary in 2009 after many nomadic years of living in Turkey, the United States and Spain with her family. She currently lives in Calgary making, writing, teaching, collaborating and always learning. 

The Art & Story of Stampede Saddles

July 6 - July 30, 2023

Contemporary Calgary is pleased to present The Art & Story of Stampede Saddles.

Saddles come in many different styles, shapes and sizes. They can be practical, for hard work on the ranch, impressive works of art, and everything in between. Each has its own character and story and was manufactured by both local saddle makers like Riley & McCormick, or further afield like Hamley & Co.

These eight saddles, on loan from the Calgary Stampede Collection & Archives, represent a range of time periods and stories, from the very first Stampede in 1912 to almost the present day. 

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Carol Sawyer
The Natalie Brettschneider Archive

June 29 - October 29, 2023

Contemporary Calgary is pleased to present Carol Sawyer: The Natalie Brettschneider Archive.

The Natalie Brettschneider Archive is an ongoing series of photographs, texts, music recitals, that together reconstruct the life and work of a genre-blurring historical performance artist. Brettschneider is fictional, but her story is laced with references to real people and places. The archive starts with her childhood in British Columbia, continues through her participation in the Parisian avant-garde between the wars, and includes evidence of her eccentric music and art-making practice in large and small communities across Canada after her return from Europe in the late 1930’s.

This project is a feminist critique of art historical narrative conventions: it aims to illuminate what gets left out of these stories, and the ways in which photographs are used to support cultural assumptions about gender, age, authorship, and art-making. Brettschneider is a stand-in for all of the female artists who have slipped through the gaps of history only to languish in obscurity, gain notoriety as models or muses of more famous male artists, or perhaps, like Claude Cahun, be “rediscovered.” The archive disrupts photographic hierarchies by mixing snapshots and studio portraits, tiny fragments and advertising paste-ups, fine art and fashion. It is stylistically eclectic, provocative and funny.

The Natalie Brettschneider Archive has been exhibited in galleries across Canada. A monograph on the project was published in 2020, as a collaborative project by the Carleton University Art Gallery in collaboration with the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, the Vancouver Art Gallery, and the Koffler Gallery. Featuring articles by Erin Silver, Assistant Professor at UBC’s Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory, as well as writings by Heather Anderson, Curator at CUAG and lead organizer of the book’s production; Michelle Jacques, Chief Curator at the AGGV; Bruce Grenville, Senior Curator at the VAG; and Mona Filip, Director/Curator at the Koffler Gallery. The book is designed by Judith Steedman, Creative Director of Steedman Design.

Video Tour

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About the Artist

Carol Sawyer (she/her) is a visual artist and singer working with photography, installation, video, and improvised music. Since the early 1990’s her visual art work has investigated the connections between photography and fiction, performance, memory, and history. In 2017 The Canada Council awarded Sawyer the Duke and Duchess of York Prize in Photography. In 2021, she was nominated for the prestigious Scotiabank Photography Award.

Sawyer earned an Honours diploma in photography from ECUAD, and a Masters in interdisciplinary arts from SFU, where she studied acting, music performance, critical theory, and music composition. As a young woman, Sawyer studied classical singing, focusing on opera and art songs, before training in extended voice with Richard Armstrong. She has performed extensively in improvised music contexts and incorporated her singing voice into her artworks in performances and videos. She has released three CDs with her improvising ensemble ion Zoo, and collaborated and recorded with American composer and trombonist Michael Vlatkovich. The much-awaited Natalie Brett Quartet LP was launched in December 2022, with music recorded at the Warehouse Studio, using vintage microphones, plate reverbs, and other historical analog gear.

Presented by

Irene Bakker
Cheryl Gottselig, K.C.
Sharon Martens
Nuvyn Peters
Carol Ryder
Karen Radford
Jan Tertzakian

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Diane Arbus
Photographs, 1956-1971

May 11 - September 17, 2023

In 1956, photographer Diane Arbus (1923–1971) marked a roll of film with the number 1 and her career as an artist began. Over the next 15 years, she produced a body of work that would revolutionize not only the portrait genre, but the medium of photography more broadly.

Working mostly in and around New York City, Arbus selected her subjects—couples, children, nudists, suburban families, circus performers, and celebrities, among others—for their singularity. “I would like to photograph everybody,” she declared in a letter to a friend in 1960. Arbus aimed to describe, in vivid detail, a range of human difference, at a moment when visual culture strove instead to emphasize uniformity.

This exhibition, drawn from the Art Gallery of Ontario’s collection, presents the full chronological arc of Arbus’ work. From the early, intimate 35mm format prints to the sharply focused square format she embraced after 1962, these photographs allow us to trace the artist’s evolving vision as part of a changing social landscape.

Diane Arbus: Photographs, 1956-1971 is organized by the Art Gallery of Ontario.

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About the Artist

Diane Arbus revolutionized the art she practiced. Born in 1923, Arbus grew up in an affluent New York family that owned a department store on Fifth Avenue. At age 18 in 1941 she married Allan Arbus and for a decade the couple worked together - he as photographer, she as stylist, producing photographs for fashion magazines. Although she started making pictures for herself in the early 1940s, it was only in 1956, when she numbered a roll of film #1, that she began seriously pursuing the work for which she has come to be known. During the 1960’s she published more than 100 photographs in leading magazines like Esquire and Harper’s Bazaar. Arbus was awarded Guggenheim Fellowships in 1963 and 1966 for her project, “American Rites, Manners and Customs”. The photographs she produced in those years attracted a great deal of critical and popular attention when a group was selected for the legendary 1967 New Documents show at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. When she died by suicide in 1971, she was already something of a legend among serious photographers, although only a relatively small number of her most important pictures were widely known. In a career that lasted little more than fifteen years, Diane Arbus produced a body of work whose style and content have secured her a place as one of the most significant artists of the 20th century.

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Contemporary Calgary is pleased to extend The Eye of Silence, the video segment of The Desert Turned to Glass, an ambitious exhibition by acclaimed Canadian artist Charles Stankievech.  Presented in our Dome gallery, this panoramic and immersive video is accompanied by an emotive soundscape composed by Stankievech.

The Desert Turned to Glass forms a place where the cosmic and the chthonic collide. From March 2 to May 7 this transmedia installation inhabited both the planetarium’s dome and the subterranean space below, whereby the visitor experienced a stratified ecosystem spread across multiple levels within the building, while representing vast distances in space and time.

As in the larger project, Stankievech’s video work The Eye of Silence, explores alternative theories of the origin of life, consciousness and art. He marshals high atmospheric video recordings of the Albertan Badlands, the Utah Salt Flats, Icelandic & Japanese volcanoes, and a meteorite crater in the Namibian desert. Visualizing the Earth at the critical moments of its evolution–this presentation speculates about the moment when life on the planet was seeded from a frozen meteorite. 

Accompanying the visuals, temporality and timelessness entwine in a sonic fugue, combining both subterranean beats and cosmic noise—inviting the visitor to meditate on deep time, deep space, and deep listening. In dialogue with contemporary scientific research, the exhibition also comprises original field recordings by Stankievech of solar rays (whistling within the earth’s ionosphere), hydrophone recordings of crackling Arctic ice and flowing Yucatan cenotes (created by a meteorite impact), and ambisonic recordings captured within the Canary Islands’ volcanic calderas.

Spanning the abyss of space and the depths of the earth, The Eye of Silence is an epic meditation on origins, endings, and infinity.

An accompanying publication edited by Dehlia Hannah and Nadim Samman is set for release later in 2023. 

About the Artist

Charles Stankievech (b. Okotoks, Canada) is an artist, writer and curator, whose award-winning work has been shown at institutions including the Palais de Tokyo, Paris; HKW Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal; Kunste Werke, Berlin; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark; National Gallery of Canada; TBA21, Vienna; as well as several biennials from Venice to SITE Santa Fe. He has lectured at dOCUMENTA (13) and the 8th Berlin Biennale, and his writing has been published by Verso, MIT, Sternberg Press, e-flux, and Princeton Architectural Press. He is an editor of Afterall Journal (U of Chicago Press), a co-founder of the Yukon School of Visual Art, and was Director of Visual Studies at the University of Toronto from 2015-2021, where he is currently Associate Professor. For 2022-23, Stankievech is a visiting researcher in the Department of Architecture at the University of Tokyo.

Visit givergy.ca/L23K to explore the live auction items or start bidding on an incredible selection of silent auction items.

Contemporary Calgary is pleased to present L23K—an exhibition featuring the work of many of Canada’s most significant artistic talents available for auction this year. This exhibition is built upon the extraordinary generosity of our friends and supporters who have contributed to the growing success of our contemporary art community here in Calgary and indeed further afield.

The LOOK Gala began in 2014 as an art auction and fundraiser to support the establishment of Contemporary Calgary and to help realize a new vision for the Centennial Planetarium as a centre for art in Canada. LOOK has grown to become one of the most coveted events in Canada, bringing people together to support and celebrate contemporary art in our community. Center stage at the LOOK Gala is our live and silent auction featuring the work seen in this exhibition. When you support the Contemporary Calgary auction you are supporting these artists directly as well as Contemporary Calgary’s expansive exhibitions and public programs.

We would like to thank the artists and gallerists who have graciously supported the art auction again this year for their vision and leadership. We are also grateful to the collectors in the community for supporting the LOOK auction in the spirit of philanthropy as they help shape the future of contemporary art in our city.

Auction Details

The online auction will open on May 4, 2022, and close at 11:30PM on June 3, 2023. The live auction will commence at Contemporary Calgary at 8:45PM on June 3, 2023.

How to Bid and Donate

• Use the top-left menu to view Silent Auction Items, access My Bids or Make a Donation.

• To bid, select an item, enter your amount and then click 'Place Bid'. Use the 'Max Bid' function and the system will automatically bid for you up to the amount entered.

• Register your details and then 'Confirm Your Bid'.

• Receive outbid text notifications and bid again!

• If you are at the event, keep an eye on the leaderboard screens to see if you're still the winning bidder!

View the Artworks In-Person

From May 4 to June 3 you can visit Contemporary Calgary to see these amazing pieces in person. Our galleries are open Wednesdays – Saturdays (12pm – 7pm) and Sundays (12pm – 5pm). 

Art Auction Sponsor

Heather Bala Edwards

Art Auction Chair

Ryan Green

Art Auction Curator

Ryan Doherty

Auctioneer

Brett Sherlock
Christie's International Consultant

Artists

Shelley Adler, Nura Ali, Laura Anzola & Matthew Waddell, Dick Averns, Ronald Bloore, Karl Blossfeldt, Dianne Bos, Nancy Boyd, Shary Boyle, Kevin Boyle, David Burdeny, Billie Rae Busby, Joane Cardinal-Schubert, Nathan Eugene Carson, Michael Corner, Douglas Coupland, Chris Cran, Chris Curreri, Paul deGroot, Mark Dicey, Amy Dryer, Marjan Eggermont, Shawn Evans, Scott Everingham, Erica Eyres, Rhys Douglas Farrell, Chris Flodberg, Chitra Ganesh, JoAnn Godenir, Ted Godwin, Julya Hajnoczky, John Hall, Maggie Hall, Bradley Harms, Marcia Harris, Alicia Henry, Robert Houle, Geoffrey Hunter, Marie Khouri, Paul Kuhn, Marie Lannoo, A.C. Leighton, Derek Liddington, Kris Lindskoog, Kenneth Lochhead, Eric Louie, Lyle XOX, Jennifer Marman & Daniel Borins, Andrew James McKay, Miville, Ron Moppett, Mark Mullin, Erik Olson, Stu Oxley, Tanja Rector, Anthony Redpath, Jean-Paul Riopelle, Simone Rochon, Nurgül Rodriguez, Dina Roudman, Ryan Sluggett, Colin Smith, Michael Smith, Barbara Steinman, Cassie Suche, Takao Tanabe, Diana Thorneycroft, Joseph Tisiga, Winnie Truong, Lauren Walker, Rhonda Weppler & Trevor Mahovsky, Carl White and John Will.

Art Auction Contributors

Megan Bradley & Antoine Ertaskiran, Alexandra Burroughs, Daniel Faria & Madeleine Taurins, Ryan Green, Chair & Megan Paterson, Jarvis Hall & Shannon Norberg, Deborah Herringer Kiss, Colette Hubner, Christine Klassen, Paul Kuhn & Esther Krasnow, Ian Loch, Jeannie McKinley, Viviane Mehr & Hesam Rezaei, Brett Sherlock, Yves Trépanier, Kevin Baer & Judy Ciccaglione, Cristin Tierney, Helen Zenith & Tamar Zenith.

Gallery Contributors

L23K Committee

Contemporary Calgary’s LOOK committee is made up of a diverse group of individuals, all of whom have one thing in common: their support of Contemporary Calgary and their commitment to arts and culture. Thank you to all of our committee members for your ideas, your time, your energy, and your enthusiasm.

HONORARY CHAIRS: Robert Houle, RCA, Suzanne Rogers, Wendy Tilby & Amanda Forbis, Hung Vanngo

GUEST OF HONOUR: Jean Grand-Maître, C.M., LL.D. h.c.

L23K CHAIR: Kelly Streit

VICE-CHAIRS: Kim Berjian & Elizabeth Middleton

Kevin Krausert
Bruce Kuwabara OC
Chethan Lakshman & Heather Dunn
Chad Larson
Michelle Lazo
D’Arcy Levesque
Margaret-Jean Mannix
Walker & Jeannie McKinley
Michael Meneghetti
Patricia Moore OC 
Katy Bond
Alexandra Burroughs
Tara Cowles
Chris Cran
Erin Donnelly-Ferguson

FREE First Thursday Partners

Commemorating the centenary of the planetarium as an architectural type, Contemporary Calgary presents an ambitious project by acclaimed Canadian artist Charles Stankievech. 

The Desert Turned to Glass forms a place where the cosmic and the chthonic collide. A transmedia installation that inhabits both the projection room of the planetarium’s dome and the subterranean space below, the visitor experiences a stratified ecosystem spread across multiple levels within the building, while representing vast distances in space and time.

Thematically, the project explores alternative theories of the origin of life, consciousness and art. Projected onto the overhead dome, a newly commissioned video work marshals high atmospheric video recordings of the Albertan Badlands, the Utah Salt Flats, Icelandic & Japanese volcanoes, and a meteorite crater in the Namibian desert. Visualizing the Earth at the critical moments of its evolution–this presentation speculates about the moment when life on the planet was seeded from a frozen meteorite. 

Accompanying the visuals, temporality and timelessness entwine in a sonic fugue, combining both subterranean beats and cosmic noise—inviting the visitor to meditate on deep time, deep space, and deep listening. In dialogue with contemporary scientific research, the exhibition also comprises original field recordings by Stankievech of solar rays (whistling within the earth’s ionosphere), hydrophone recordings of crackling Arctic ice and flowing Yucatan cenotes (created by a meteorite impact), and ambisonic recordings captured within the Canary Islands’ volcanic calderas. In the cavernous space below, bacteria consume pools of petroleum rippling with infrasonic waves, underneath an ultrasonic sound installation for bats.

Spanning the abyss of space and the depths of the earth, The Desert Turned to Glass is an epic meditation on origins, endings, and infinity.

On the evening of the opening, Stankievech will perform a live concert inside the planetarium dome as part of a series of site-specific performances entitled The Glass Key (including in James Turell’s Tree of Light, Merida, Mexico and a volcanic tube at Buenavista Vineyards, Lanzarote). 

An accompanying publication edited by Dehlia Hannah and Nadim Samman is set for release later in 2023. 

About the Artist

Charles Stankievech (b. Okotoks, Canada) is an artist, writer and curator, whose award-winning work has been shown at institutions including the Palais de Tokyo, Paris; HKW Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal; Kunste Werke, Berlin; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark; National Gallery of Canada; TBA21, Vienna; as well as several biennials from Venice to SITE Santa Fe. He has lectured at dOCUMENTA (13) and the 8th Berlin Biennale, and his writing has been published by Verso, MIT, Sternberg Press, e-flux, and Princeton Architectural Press. He is an editor of Afterall Journal (U of Chicago Press), a co-founder of the Yukon School of Visual Art, and was Director of Visual Studies at the University of Toronto from 2015-2021, where he is currently Associate Professor. For 2022-23, Stankievech is a visiting researcher in the Department of Architecture at the University of Tokyo.

February 3 – February 16, 2023

The Exposure Photography Festival announces its February 2023 programme. Returning for its nineteenth year, it will present the work of over 160 exhibiting visual artists hosted in galleries, local businesses, online and outdoors.

Exposure’s curated exhibitions, the International Open Call and Emerging Photographers Showcase, will be hosted at Contemporary Calgary, a significant visual arts destination dedicated to modern and contemporary art. The exhibitions present a broad range of works, including photocollage, conceptual photography, politically engaged practices and works that embrace social and individual experience, as well as visual explorations of identity and personal narratives.

The Exposure 2023 International Open Call exhibition will feature the work of photographers and visual artists based around the world who incorporate, celebrate, or challenge the photographic medium within their practices. Selected by Michèle Pearson Clarke, Artist, Writer, Educator and Photo Laureate for the City of Toronto (2019-2022), the exhibition will present the works of contemporary practitioners based in Canada, France, Greece, Iceland, Japan, Netherlands, UK, and USA.

The Exposure 2023 Emerging Photographers Showcase celebrates the rich talent of early-career practitioners who are based in Alberta. Selected by Tiffany Jones, Publisher, Overlapse Books, the exhibition provides insight into the dynamic and growing community of fine art photographers here in our province.

Exposure’s 2022 Emerging Photographer of the Year award recipient Raeann Cheung will be presenting her solo show ‘WE ARE IMMIGRANTS - The Hidden Hardships and Legacy of Early Chinese Canadian Immigrants’. The exhibition will explore the resilience of the early Chinese Canadian immigrants whose perseverance and hard work helped strengthen the geographic boundaries, armed forces, and economic capacity of this country from mid 19th century onward.

Exposure Fence: People & Place, is an outdoor exhibition at Calgary’s Olympic Plaza, presented in partnership with the Chinook Blast! Festival. Curated by Beth Kane, People & Place presents the work of five visual artists based in Treaty 6 and 7 territories, also known as Southern Alberta. The work and perspectives of this dynamic group of exhibiting artists provide us with both celebratory and critical visual insights regarding the complex, intertwined relationships between people and place within these traditional territories. In addition to activating public space in Calgary’s downtown core, the exhibition promotes wider understandings and increased access to the art of photography and visual storytelling, amplifying impactful narratives and connecting artists to a wide audience.

Exposure will also bring an exciting city-wide public exhibition to its audiences in Calgary. In partnership with Pattison Outdoor Advertising, Exposure Billboard will show the work of 31 international and local artists and photographers via digital billboards located throughout the city. Photographs will be hosted in three different locations for a three-week duration. Exposure continues to provide innovative ways for Calgarians to engage with the arts.

EXPOSURE 2023 INTERNATIONAL OPEN CALL

Juried by by Michèle Pearson Clarke, Artist, Writer, Educator and Photo Laureate for the City of Toronto (2019-2022), the Exposure 2023 International Open Call exhibition features the work of photographers and visual artists based around the world who incorporate, celebrate or challenge the photographic medium within their practices. The exhibition shows a broad range of works, including photocollage, conceptual photography, politically engaged practices and works that embrace social and individual experience, as well as visual explorations of identity and personal narratives.

Exhibiting Artists are Anthony Gebrehiwot (Canada), Glenna Jennings (USA), Jaiden George (Canada), Jake Eshelman (USA), Kelly O'Brien (UK), Khim Hipol (Canada), Leia Ankers (UK), Linda Heiss (USA), Panos Charalampidis + Mary Chairetaki (Greece), Sarah Christianson (USA), Sarah Mei Herman (Netherlands), Serena Dzenis (Iceland), Shanen Louis (Canada), Takako Kido (Japan) and Valerio Geraci (France).

For more information on our exhibiting artists please see Exposure Festival’s website.

EXPOSURE 2023 EMERGING PHOTOGRAPHERS SHOWCASE

Juried by Tiffany Jones, Publisher of Overlapse, the Emerging Photographers Showcase presents the work of fifteen photographers and visual artists based in Treaties 6,7 and 8 Territories in Alberta. The exhibition celebrates the rich talent of early-career practitioners who are based in the province while providing an insight into our dynamic and growing community of fine art photographers here in Alberta.

Exhibiting Artists are AJ Kluck, Amir Salehi, Angela Boehm, Brady Fullerton, Danny Luong, Elyse Longair, Haley Eyre, Kaitlyn Kerr, Levin Ifko, Megan Hamilton, Melika Forouzan, Mitra Samavaki, Saeed Abdollahi Alavijeh, Stephen Chan and Tekoa Predika.

For more information on our exhibiting artists please see Exposure Festival’s website.

EXPOSURE 2023 EMERGING PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR: RAEANN CHEUNG

Exposure’s 2022 Emerging Photographer of the Year award recipient Raeann Cheung will be presenting her solo show ‘WE ARE IMMIGRANTS - The Hidden Hardships and Legacy of Early Chinese Canadian Immigrants’. The exhibition will explore the resilience of the early Chinese Canadian immigrants whose perseverance and hard work helped strengthen the geographic boundaries, armed forces, and economic capacity of this country from mid 19th century onward.

EXPOSURE FENCE: PEOPLE & PLACE

Exposure, in partnership with the Chinook Blast! Festival, will present an outdoor exhibition at Calgary’s Olympic Plaza. Curated by Beth Kane, People & Place presents the work of five visual artists based in Treaty 6 and 7 territories, also known as Southern Alberta. The work and perspectives of this dynamic group of exhibiting artists provide us with both celebratory and critical visual insights regarding the complex, intertwined relationships between People & Place within these traditional territories. In addition to activating public space in Calgary’s downtown core, the exhibition promotes wider understandings and increased access to the art of photography and visual storytelling, amplifying impactful narratives and connecting artists to a wide audience.

Chitra Ganesh
Astral Dance

13 October 2022 – 9 April 2023

Contemporary Calgary is pleased to present Astral Dance, the first solo exhibition of works by Chitra Ganesh in Canada, and a significant survey of her practice spanning more than twenty years.

At its core, Ganesh’s work engages with aesthetics and subject matter that elude national and conceptual boundaries that often perpetuate an “othering” of historically marginalized subjects and narratives. Drawing upon iconography from the South Asian subcontinent, science fiction, queer theory, vintage comics, Surrealism, Bollywood posters, and more, Ganesh delivers fantastic, dreamlike worlds where the past, present and future are merged into new, speculative propositions.

Astral Dance brings together drawings, paintings, photography, collages, wall installations, animations and sculpture in a site-specific exhibition that reveals the depth and diversity of Ganesh’s practice. Whether through multi-panel comic installations or large immersive murals with three-dimensional elements, her hybrid cultural visions challenge perceived ideas of sexuality, power, desire and authority. Her early comic series, Tales of Amnesia, recontextualizes the widely read comic Amar Chitra Katha, a collection of instructive children’s stories based in Hindu mythologies and Indian history. She transforms these folk and children’s forms into non-linear narratives replete with enigmatic female protagonists that destabilize meaning, tradition, and authenticity. Elsewhere she invokes the world of silent cinema with dramatic charcoal renderings of iconic moments from Karma (1933) or Metropolis (1927), exploring the relationship between science fiction, epic myth, and Orientalism. Throughout Astral Dance, Ganesh weaves everyday life with the magical, mythological, and erotic, offering seductive new narratives swirling within realms of possibility.

About the Artist

Chitra Ganesh (b. 1975 Brooklyn, New York, USA) received a BA in Art-Semiotics and Comparative Literature from Brown University, Providence, RI in 1996. She attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2001 and received her MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University, NY in 2002. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, USA. 

Across a twenty-year practice, Chitra Ganesh has developed an expansive body of work rooted in drawing and painting, which has evolved to encompass animations, wall drawings, collages, computer generated imagery, video, and sculpture. Through studies in literature, semiotics, social theory, science fiction, and historical and mythic texts, Ganesh attempts to reconcile representations of femininity, sexuality, and power absent from the artistic and literary canons. She often draws on Hindu and Buddhist iconography and South Asian forms such as Kalighat and Madhubani, and is currently negotiating her relationship to these images with the rise of right wing fundamentalism in India. 

Ganesh's work has been widely exhibited in the United States and internationally, including solo shows at Brooklyn Museum, NY,USA; MoMA PS1, NY, USA; The Kitchen, NY, USA; The Rubin Museum of Art, NY, USA; The Andy Warhol Museum, PA, USA; Gothenburg Kunsthalle, Sweden; and Times Square, NY,USA. Her work has also been exhibited in important group exhibitions at The Walker Art Center, MN, USA; the Baltimore Museum of Art, MD, USA; The Queens Museum of Art, NY, USA; The Asia Society, NY, USA; The Bronx Museum, NY, USA; The Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX, USA; the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, CA, USA; the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, CA, USA; the Boca Raton Museum of Art, LA, USA; the Hayward Gallery, London, UK; Saatchi Museum, London, UK: Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Italy; Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno, Italy; the ZKM Center for Art and Media, Germany; Göteborgs Konsthall, Germany; Arthotek Kunstverein, Göttingen, Germany; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai, China; the Gwangju Contemporary Arts Centre, Korea; the Prince of Wales Museum, Mumbai, India; Indira Ghandi National Centre for Arts, New Delhi, India; Devi Art Foundation, India; the Kochi Biennial, India; the Dhaka Art Summit, Bangladesh among others.

Ganesh’s work is represented in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, NY, USA; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA, USA; the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY, USA; The Brooklyn Museum, NY, USA; The Art Institute of Chicago, IL, USA; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; The Ford Foundation, NY, USA; University of Michigan Museum of Art, MI, USA; The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, PA, USA; the Devi Art Foundation, India; Kiran Nadar Museum, Delhi, India; the Saatchi Collection, London, UK; Burger Collection, Hong Kong; Deutsche Bank, among others.

Ganesh is the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards, including grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts; Printed Matter; the Art Matters Foundation; the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in the Creative Arts; the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award for Painters and Sculptors; and the Hodder Fellowship from the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University, and the Pollock Krasner Foundation.

Supporters

Human Capital

13 October 2022 – 16 April 2023

Curated by Tak Pham, Associate Curator, MacKenzie Art Gallery.

Artists: Nura Ali, Aleesa Cohene, Darija Radakovic, Chantal Gibson, Jeannie Mah, Esmaa Mohamoud, Nurgul Rodriguez, Marigold Santos, Farihah Shah, Florence Yee, Jin-me Yoon and Shellie Zhang.

The exhibition is presented in partnership with the MacKenzie Art Gallery.

Human Capital presents work that offers insight into the impact of Canada’s immigration policies and history: how it treats humans as capital, and the role it plays in shaping the complex and contested formation of a “Canadian identity.”

Canada, like most Western nations, has a long history of immigration campaigns that promise economic prosperity to both the state and immigrants. As a result, Canadian immigration policies have historically focused on maximizing economic contributions while minimizing disruption to the “fundamental character of the Canadian population,” as remarked by Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King in 1947.  

Canada’s current, points-based immigration system, in place since 1967, attempts to provide a non-discriminatory framework for assessing individuals and collectives and directing them to strategic economic and geographic sectors. Once inside Canada, new immigrants are expected to boost the country’s economy by producing more for less. The system has little regard for existing marginalized communities, as it continues to reinforce “Canadian values” with an ever-growing intake of immigrants, whose admittance is driven primarily by the economic demands of the country. For all these reasons, the exhibition asks: What else is lost when human potential is measured as units of capital? 

Supporters

23 June – 18 September 2022

Canadian artist Chris Curreri’s work focuses on the idea that we constantly contend with things outside ourselves and, crucially, with other people. These relationships create a network, a fabric within which we are enmeshed. To what extent, then, do we open ourselves to, or close ourselves off from this fabric?

Working across photography and sculpture, Curreri presents an expansive exhibition for Contemporary Calgary with works produced over the last decade, including a newly created large-scale installation.

Presented in partnership with the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, this exhibition explores bodily porousness as a form of vulnerability. To be a body is to be penetrated.

About the Artist

Chris Curreri is a Canadian artist who works with film, photography and sculpture. His work is premised on the idea that things in the world are not defined by essential properties, but rather by the actual relationships that we establish with them. Recent exhibitions include: A Surrogate, A Proxy, A Stand In at Agnes Etherington Art Centre (Kingston, Canada), Thick Skull, Thin Skin at Esker Foundation (Calgary, Canada), The Way We Are 1.0 at Weserburg museum für moderne Kunst (Bremen, Germany), Sleeping with a Vengeance, Dreaming of a Life at Württembergischer Kunstverein (Stuttgart, Germany), The Ventriloquist at Daniel Faria Gallery (Toronto, Canada), 2017 Canadian Biennial at National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa, Canada), Compassionate Protocols at Callicoon Fine Arts (New York, USA), La Biennale de Montréal 2016 at Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal (Montréal, Québec). His films have been screened at: Image Forum Festival, Japan; Festival Internacional de Cine de Mar del Plata, Argentina; and the Toronto International Film Festival, Canada. He holds an MFA from the Milton Avery Graduate School for the Arts at Bard College.

Supporters

Community Partners

23 June – 18 September 2022

Curated by Wanda Nanibush

The exhibition is organized by the Art Gallery of Ontario, sponsored by TD Bank and generously supported by Maurice Law Barristers & Solicitors which is the first—and only—Indigenous-owned national law firm in Canada. The exhibition will travel to the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC, May 25, 2023 - June 2, 2024.

Robert Houle is one of the most influential First Nations artists to break into the contemporary art world. His work blends abstraction, modernism and conceptualism with First Nations aesthetics and histories. Houle went from residential school to art school to museum boardrooms and on to the art world stage as an artist, curator and writer.

Robert Houle: Red is Beautiful consists of large installations, paintings and drawings created between 1970 and 2021. Themes in the exhibition include Sacred Geometry, The Spiritual Legacy of the Ancient Ones, Beyond History Painting, The Aesthetics of Disappearance, Residential School Years, and Sovereignty.

Houle is a colourist working in oil and has painted an impressive body of work that challenges our understanding of Western and First Nations art history.

Works from 1970 to 1983 are marked by his exploration of abstract expressionists such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman and Jasper Johns and the pure abstraction and geometry of Mondrian and Malevich. Houle brings an older Indigenous abstract tradition to this history and, in the meeting of the two, he emerges as a new voice in modern abstraction that values immediacy, gesture, the spiritual qualities of colour, piercing the canvas with organic materials, Anishinaabe geometry and Indigenous sacred belongings.

This exhibition shows iconic works, such as Kanata, a reworking of Benjamin West's The Death of General Wolfe, and Parfleches for the Last Supper, addressing his respect for Indigenous spiritual traditions. 

Houle’s large-scale paintings and installations challenge commercial appropriation of First Nation names like Pontiac and Apache and bring Indigenous land rights to the forefront for the public. Houle's work also addresses major resistance movements and global topics.

As a curator, his first exhibitions began a brand new discourse on contemporary First Nations art. His work challenged audience expectations of what First Nations art looked like. Houle stayed independent from the trends and stereotypical cultural performances of the day. 

Bravely, Houle also brought the residential schools era into sharp relief. His work Sandy Bay (1998-99) dealt with his own experience of being torn from his home. Later, in 2009, he began to deal with his memories of abuse in the school through a series of visceral drawings and paintings. Houle turns to the spiritual power of the ancient ones providing a new vision for an Indigenous future that holds the complexity of contemporary First Nations identity in its grasp. 

This exhibition is a walk through fifty years of what matters to First Nations and Settler relations today with an artist who was always ahead of time.

About the Artist

Robert Houle (b. 1947, St. Boniface, Manitoba) is an Anishinaabe Saulteaux contemporary artist, curator, writer, critic, and educator. For more than fifty years, he has worked to advocate for First Nations artistic representation and sovereignty and has established himself as an essential force within the artistic community in Canada and around the world. Houle studied at the University of Manitoba, McGill University, and the International Summer Academy of Fine Arts in Salzburg, Austria, and for many years taught Indigenous Studies at the Ontario College of Art and Design. From 1977 to 1981, he was Curator of Contemporary Aboriginal Art at the Canadian Museum of History (formerly the Canadian Museum of Civilization). As a curator, he is also responsible for landmark exhibitions such as Land Spirit Power: First Nations at the National Gallery of Canada (1992).

Houle’s various solo exhibitions include Lost Tribes, Hood College, Maryland; Indians from A to Z and Sovereignty over Subjectivity, Winnipeg Art Gallery; Palisade, Carleton University Art Gallery, Ottawa; Anishnabe Walker Court, an intervention at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Paris/Ojibwa, Canadian Cultural Centre, Paris, Peterborough, and Windsor; Shaman Dream in Colour, Kinsman Robinson Galleries, Toronto; Looking for the Shaman, John B. Aird Gallery,Toronto; Robert Houle: Pahgedenaun, Carleton University Art Gallery, Ottawa; and Robert Houle: Histories, McMichael Canadian Collection, Kleinburg, Ontario. 

He has also participated in several important international group exhibitions, including Recent Generations: Native American Art from 1950 to 1987, Heard Museum, Phoenix; Traveling Theory, Jordan National Gallery, Amman, Jordan; Notions of Conflict, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Real Fictions: Four Canadian Artists, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia; Tout le temps/Every Time, 2000 Montreal Biennale; We Come in Peace...: Histories of the Americas, Musée d’art Contemporain de Montréal; Sakahàn, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Before and After the Horizon: Anishinaabe Artists of the Great Lakes, National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, and Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; and Toronto: Tributes and + Tributaries, 1971–1989 and Every, Now, Then: Reframing Nationhood, both at the Art Gallery of Ontario. 

His artistic achievements have garnered him numerous awards and accolades, including the 2001 Toronto Arts Award for the Visual Arts; the 2015 Governor General’s Award in the Visual and Media Arts; and most recently, the 2020 Founder’s Achievement Award from the Toronto Friends of the Visual Arts. He has been awarded two honorary doctorates, one in 2014 from his alma mater, the University of Manitoba and a Doctorate of Laws from the University of Ontario Institute of Technology in 2016. Houle has also served on various boards and advisory committees, including those of the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto, The Indigenous Curatorial Collective, A Space, The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, and the Native Canadian Centre of Toronto. 

Supporters

Community Partners

On display are independent artists Skye Nicolas and Jonathan Wolfe, and Bloom collective artists Ben Thomas, David Lisser, Dexamol, Hannes Hummel, Icki, noCreative, onyro, Stephan Duquesnoy, Shavonne Wong & Tina Eisen.

Perhaps it is time to think of digital art as a new center, a point we have arrived at; the rebellious teenage offspring of traditional art and the 21st century.

Maturing at an incomprehensible rate, movements that once took decades or centuries to establish happen in weeks, or even days with the advent of digital creativity. Renegotiating the definition of space, artist, community and viewership, crypto artists are re-introducing the union between art and technology to establish an unprecedented legacy.

In our global LOOK2022 collection, our NFTs showcase diverse creators focused on visual experiences expanded with sound and scent, merging URL and IRL. Curated by Alia Aluma, a graduate in the field of decentralized societies and CryptoArt history.

JONATHAN WOLFE
LOOKING IN
2022
MP 4 Still, ACRYLIC AND GOUACHE ON WOOD PANEL 16" X 20"

VALUE $28,000
MINIMUM BID $14,000
LISTED ON SUPERRARE MARKETPLACE THE FIRST NFT COLLECTOR WILL RECEIVE A TANGIBLE, IRL PAINTING FROM WHICH THE NFT IS RENDERED.

Jonathan Wolfe is a 22 year old artist based in Calgary, Alberta. He studied at the Alberta University of the Arts for painting. Wolfe’s art often deals with humor, color, and play while exploring many different mediums such as acrylic, gouache, digital animation, and print. His work has been featured in both URL and IRL exhibitions, including “Fabricated Fairytales” on Nifty Gateway in 2021, where his work sat beside notable NFT artists FEWOCiOUS, parrot_ism and Odious, influential and defining figures in the playful world of anti-hierarchical creation. “Fabricated Fairytales” auctioned Wolfe’s work, Living in my Head, for $55,555.55 USD.

Wolfe’s work has been discussed in Artsy (2020) and Toronto Star, with the young artist's playful pieces appearing on Super Rare (2020 & 2022), Dart Milano (2021), in Albert Einstein Foundation (2021), and $MEME (2021), and in collaboration with Nike & RTFKT Studios with his own AirForce1s in 2021. This local artist has become a significant member of the NFTism movement, a moment in art focused on collaborative, community focused creation and sale, renegotiating what it means to have agency as an artist.

SKYE NICOLAS
IN BLOOM: FLOWER WORK #1
MP4 Still

MP4, 1 of 5 Works, Exhibited at: Bang & Olufsen showroom, Königsallee 61, 40215 Düsseldorf.

Born in Manila, lives and works in
New York (NY), USA Ranging from large format paintings, filmmaking, photography, video installation, public space interventions, sculpture, and street wear design, New York-based post-conceptual artist Skye Nicolas blends socio-political commentary with elegantly composed amalgamations of vivid imagery and pop culture references through various means of precisely executed appropriation and witty subtextual conversation. In doing so, he explores the fundamentally potent tactics of Twenty-First Century marketing while revealing the systemic trappings of modern day consumerism as a way of life. At the core of his work, Nicolas pinpoints the pulse of a living transmedia consciousness: a fully plugged-in and engaged technology- driven culture that engorges itself on mass-produced content and information.

BEN THOMAS
ARCHIBOLD
JPG

JPG, 1 OF 5 WORKS, LISTED ON ETHERSCAN. CURRENT COLLECTOR: M3

BEN THOMAS, is a UK-based Artist and Art Director working in the medium of 3D. His work is often inspired by dreams, human connection, world affairs and mental health. He also counts music as one of his biggest daily inspirations.

Ben Thomas is an Art Director at Cape & Monocle where he predominantly works on projects in the Entertainment industry and advertising sector for clients such as Sony, Universal, Island Records, BMG and Warner Music. He has also been making my own art and exhibiting in traditional spaces for over a decade.

Outside of client work, Ben has been part of the NFT industry since November 2020 and first minted in February 2021. All of his pieces listed have sold out, including my recent submission as part of the Bloom Collective drop on Nifty Gateway which sold out in under 15 minutes.

DAVID LISSER
GROTTO
MP4 Still

MP4, MINTED ON FEBRUARY 1, 2022.
LAST SOLD: 3.0Ξ ($8,284 USD).
CURRENT COLLECTOR: @PADDYSTASH

DAVID LISSER, is a UK based artist working across digital and physical media. He has a background in sculpture and his work has been shown widely in Museums and Galleries across the UK and Europe, including at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art and MIMA. He is known for his cultured-meat artworks, which interrogate the relationship between technology, nature and consumption – and utilize the digital simulation of life to unpick our understanding of ‘the real’. He is deeply embedded in the NFT landscape, and works to bridge the gap between the traditional art-world and this newer space. He is on the Curation Committee for Fingerprints DAO and was an artist advisor for the inaugural Vertical CryptoArt artist residency programme.

DEXAMOL
GENESYNTH
MP4 Still

MP4, MINTED ON SUPERRARE, APRIL 26, 2021.
LAST SOLD: 2.2Ξ ($4,381 USD)
CURRENT COLLECTOR: @PLAYDRESS

DEXAMOL, is an artist who produces animations and
digital images, as well as physical sculptures. Dexamol’s
art bypasses engendered dichotomies such as natural vs artificial & finds beauty in the small things. His work was most recently shown at Art Basel, the billboards of Shibuya Tokyo and at Wieden+Kennedy in a charity exhibition in support of Rainforest Trust.

HANNES HUMMEL
ARTIFICIAL FLORILEGIA – ACT 1
MP4 Still

MP4, MINTED ON OCTOBER 13, 2021.
LAST SOLD: 9.0Ξ ($32,211 USD)
CURRENT COLLECTOR: @TAPPYSF

HANNES HUMMEL, is a German-based interdisciplinary Designer and 3D Artist focusing on contemporary imagery. His recent digital artworks focus on the mesmerizing complexity of organic structures—symmetry, tessellations, and patterns within patterns capturing fragments of nature. In addition, his work often references a wide variety of historical art movements, reimagined through the digital medium. Hummel’s work was showcased at Art Basel Miami, on multiple Billboards in Tokyo and Beijing, and at the world’s first exclusive NFT gallery. Superchief Gallery. in New York City. Besides creating digital art, he has worked as a freelance motion designer for top-leading brands such as creatives such as Sony Japan, Nike, Iris Van Herpen, BMW, and more.

ICKI
META-PLAGIARISM
MP4 Still

MP4, MINTED ON JULY 20, 2021. LAST SOLD: 1.55Ξ ($3,087 USD) CURRENT COLLECTOR: @KRYBHARAT

ICKI, is an independent creative with more than 10 years of commercial experience operating across consultancy and commercial creative positions based in London, UK. He is known for reimagining ‘conceptual and minimalist’ art within the digital domain and exploring themes that transcend Crypto native and non-native perspectives.

NOCREATIVE
EN ROUTE.
MP4 Still

MP4, MINTED ON SUPERRARE, MAY 5, 2022.

NOCREATIVE’S work, En Route, takes the erratic nature of a piece of cloth in the wind, displayed through seamless

looping. In doing so, he has created a contemporary art installation viewed through a screen. While his inspiration, Hans Haackes, was restricted by basic physics, noCreative is not. With this freedom, noCreative declares, “I have done the impossible—this is art in transformation.”

SHAVONNE WONG
THE KISS
MP4 Still

MP4, MINTED ON SUPERRARE, SEPTEMBER 2021. BOUGHT FOR 4Ξ ($7,967 USD), CURRENTLY LISTED FOR 5.15Ξ ($10,257 USD). CURRENT COLLECTOR: @JO7_VAULT

SHAVONNE WONG, awarded Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia,
is a 3D Virtual Model Creator and NFT Artist. Building on her experiences as a Fashion and Advertising Photographer for the past decade, she creates life-like virtual models and places them in surreal environments and the metaverse. Wong has collaborated with Vogue Singapore, Sotheby’s, the World Economic Forum and the World of Women project. She also created a 500 pieces project, Love is Love, a reflection on the expression of love and identity that enabled its collectors to have a say in determining the generative artwork’s outcome. Notable collectors include Idris Elba.

STEPHAN DUQUESNOY
RUINOUS OPULENCE
JPG

JPG, MINTED ON MAKERSPLACE, SEPTEMBER 25, 2021.
LAST SOLD: 1.25Ξ .($4,995.11 USD). CURRENT OWNER: @404ART

STEPHAN DUQUESNOY’S work is easily recognizable due to his unique combination of romantic aesthetics with hints of classical sentiment and melancholy. To create his work, Stephan uses an unique mixture of craftsmanship in combination with custom-made procedural tools. His works often feature lush ornaments and flowers in combination with strong feminine characters. Both his compositional elements and work philosophy are heavily inspired by the pre-raphaelite brotherhood painters.

TINA EISEN
AYUTHIA
MP4 Still

MP4, MINTED ON SUPERRARE, NOVEMBER 27, 2021.
LAST SOLD: 5.22Ξ ($10,396.83 USD)
CURRENT OWNER: CRYPTINISH

Tina Eisen, is an editorial and commercial beauty and fashion photographer based in London, UK. With over 10 years of experience in the industry. Her artwork revolves around macro self portraits, where she explores the beauty of the focused minimal, combined with her expertise in the beauty industry. Sometimes exploring the dark sides of human nature.

Tina’s Beauty Photography workshops in Europe and North America, her publications and online beauty photography tutorials are popular amongst a global audience.

Tina is a regular speaker and educator for photography equipment and software brands such as Canon, Profoto and Capture One and is regularly showcasing her craft at national and international trade-shows.

Art Auction Sponsor

Heather Bala Edwards & k.d. lang

Art Auction Chair

Deborah Herringer Kiss

Auctioneer

Brett Sherlock
Christie's International Consultant

LOOK2022 Committee 

Contemporary Calgary’s LOOK committee is made up of a diverse group of individuals, all of whom have one thing in common: their support of Contemporary Calgary and their commitment to making LOOK2022 the party of the year. Thank you to all of our committee members for your ideas, your time, your energy, and your enthusiasm.

LOOK2022 Chair

Kelly Streit

Honorary Chairs

Douglas Coupland, OC, OBC
M. Ann McCaig, CM, AOE
Kelly Oxford
Adrian A. Stimson

Vice-Chairs

Kim Berjian
Erin Donnelly-Ferguson

Committee Members

Ryan Atkins, Alexandra Burroughs, Elizabeth Carson, Tara Cowles, Chris Cran, Chaitali Dave, Lauretta Enders, Samara Felesky Hunt, Matthew Grant & Carly Duerr, Arif Hirani, Ernest Hon, Usman Jutt, Deb Kerr, Steve & Zoe Klintberg Nagy, Kevin Krausert, Bruce Kuwabara, CM, Chad Larson, Michelle Lazo, D'Arcy Levesque, Margaret-Jean Mannix, Walker & Jeannie McKinley, Michael Meneghetti, Elizabeth & Ross Middleton, Pat Moore, OC, Ellen Parker, Jenn Rallison, M. Carol Ryder, Robyn Silverberg, Chloe Streit, Peter & Jan Tertzakian, Todd Towers, and Jan Wittig.

Factory Dinner Sponsor

Food & Beverage Sponsor

Andy Warhol: One Night Only Sponsor

Studio 54 Reception Sponsor

After Party Sponsor

Entertainment Sponsor

Community Partner

Travel & Accommodations Sponsor

Media Sponsor

LOOK2022 Patron

In-Kind Sponsors

Andy Warhol: One Night Only

Andy Warhol: One Night Only, an interview with Don Kottmann.

Andy Warhol: One Night Only, an interview with John Will.

For One Night Only, Contemporary Calgary is thrilled to share a selection of works by one of the world’s most significant contemporary artists, Andy Warhol. Drawn from collections within Calgary, the works on display reflect a diverse range of Warhol’s prints and other ephemera. From the glamour of Marilyn Monroe to the commonplace Hamburger, seminal works like these were foundational to the artist’s development of Pop Art and his reflections on consumerism, material culture, celebrity and the banality of contemporary American culture.

Andy Warhol: One Night Only is a rare and exciting addition to the LOOK gala that extends this year’s theme drawing upon the magic of Studio 54 and Warhol as one of the clubs most alluring and regular guests. Disco, Pop, glamour, sexual freedom, and extreme exclusivity made Studio 54 a cultural phenomenon that captured a moment in time at once dizzying, ecstatic and rife with an unbridled lust for life. Warhol’s artistic practice and cultivation of celebrity thrived in this milieu, a club where many of his subjects, including Mohammed Ali, would be found dancing the night away.

This exhibition is generously sponsored by Masters Gallery and we are delighted to announce they have included Dollar Sign, a one-of-a-kind serigraphic print on silk handkerchief, as a work not only on view, but available for purchase. Dollar Sign is included in Masters Gallery exhibition of Andy Warhol launching June 17th with a percentage of the sales going to support Contemporary Calgary’s exhibitions and public programs.

Factory Dinner Sponsor

Food & Beverage Sponsor

Andy Warhol: One Night Only Sponsor

LOOK2022 Art Auction Sponsor

Heather Bala Edwards & k.d. lang

Studio 54 Reception Sponsor

Studio 54 After Party Sponsor

Entertainment Sponsor

Community Sponsor

LOOK2022 Patron

Media Sponsor

In-Kind Sponsors

Visit givergy.ca/look2022 to explore the live auction items or start bidding on an incredible selection of silent auction items.

We are thrilled to present LOOK, an art auction featuring works from many of the country’s most significant artists, generously donated for our annual live and silent art auctions. With painting, sculpture, and photography spanning decades of practice, the auction includes a wide diversity of artwork by renowned artists such as Kent Monkman, Angela Grossmann, Edward Burtynsky, Carol Wainio, Ted Godwin, Joane Cardinal-Schubert, John Hall, Diana Thorneycroft, Corri-Lynn Tetz and many more. We are also honoured to feature the work of Cathy Daley, Harry Kiyooka and Mary Shannon Will, three much beloved artists who passed away recently but leave a lasting legacy.

The LOOK art auction is sponsored by Heather Bala Edwards & kd lang, and supported by Deborah Herringer Kiss as auction chair. We are pleased to welcome Brett Sherlock, Christie’s International Consultant, as auctioneer, who will help us find loving homes for the incredible works on display. LOOK would not be possible without the extraordinary support of the artists and the many dealers, sponsors, committee members, donors and collectors who recognize the value of arts and culture and the importance of philanthropy. All proceeds from the LOOK art auction directly support public programming and exhibitions at Contemporary Calgary.

Auction Details

The online auction will open May 13, 2022, and close at 11:30PM on June 11, 2022. The live auction will commence at Contemporary Calgary at 8:45PM on June 11, 2022.

How to Bid and Donate

• Use the top-left menu to view Silent Auction Items, access My Bids or Make a Donation.

• To bid, select an item, enter your amount and then click 'Place Bid'. Use the 'Max Bid' function and the system will automatically bid for you up to the amount entered.

• Register your details and then 'Confirm Your Bid'.

• Receive outbid text notifications and bid again!

• If you are at the event, keep an eye on the leaderboard screens to see if you're still the winning bidder!

View the Artworks In-Person

From May 13 to June 10 you can visit Contemporary Calgary to see these amazing pieces in person. Our galleries are open Wednesdays – Saturdays (12pm – 7pm) and Sundays (12pm – 5pm). 

Art Auction Sponsor

Heather Bala Edwards & k.d. lang

Art Auction Chair

Deborah Herringer Kiss

Auctioneer

Brett Sherlock
Christie's International Consultant

Artists

Nura Ali, Maxwell Bates, Dianne Bos, David Burdeny, Catherine Burgess, Edward Burtynsky, Billie Rae Busby, Joane Cardinal-Schubert, Michael Corner, Chris Cran, Cathy Daley, DaveandJenn, Mark Dicey, Joseph Drapell, Rhys Douglas Farrell, Ted Godwin, Angela Grossmann, John Hall, Maggie Hall, Marcia Harris, John Heward, Aron Hill, Brian Howell, Darryl Hughto, Geoffrey Hunter, Laurel Johannesson, Kent Merriman Jr., Illingworth Kerr, Harry Kiyooka, Paul Kuhn, Robert Marchessault, Andrew James McKay, Steve Mennie, Chris Millar, David Milne, Kent Monkman, Ron Moppett, Mark Mullin, Yvonne Mullock, Erik Olson, Laura Pope, Darija Radakovic, Sylvia Safdie, Ryan Sluggett, Michael Smith, Corri-Lynn Tetz, David Thauberger, Diana Thorneycroft, Harold Town, Carol Wainio, Andy Warhol, John Will, Mary Shannon Will, and Diana Zasadny.

Art Auction Contributors

Alexandra Burroughs, Christine Klassen, Paul Kuhn & Esther Krasnow, Ryan Green & Megan Paterson, Jarvis Hall & Shannon Norberg, Colette Hubner & Ian Loch, Viviane Mehr & Meeka Sato, Yves Trépanier, Kevin Baer & Judy Ciccaglione, Helen Zenith & Tamar Zenith.

Gallery Contributors

LOOK2022 Committee 

Contemporary Calgary’s LOOK committee is made up of a diverse group of individuals, all of whom have one thing in common: their support of Contemporary Calgary and their commitment to making LOOK2022 the party of the year. Thank you to all of our committee members for your ideas, your time, your energy, and your enthusiasm.

LOOK2022 Chair

Kelly Streit

Honorary Chairs

Douglas Coupland, OC, OBC
M. Ann McCaig, CM, AOE
Kelly Oxford
Adrian A. Stimson

Vice-Chairs

Kim Berjian
Erin Donnelly-Ferguson

Committee Members

Ryan Atkins, Alexandra Burroughs, Elizabeth Carson, Tara Cowles, Chris Cran, Chaitali Dave, Lauretta Enders, Samara Felesky Hunt, Matthew Grant & Carly Duerr, Arif Hirani, Ernest Hon, Usman Jutt, Deb Kerr, Steve & Zoe Klintberg Nagy, Kevin Krausert, Bruce Kuwabara, CM, Chad Larson, Michelle Lazo, D'Arcy Levesque, Margaret-Jean Mannix, Walker & Jeannie McKinley, Michael Meneghetti, Elizabeth & Ross Middleton, Pat Moore, OC, Ellen Parker, Jenn Rallison, M. Carol Ryder, Robyn Silverberg, Chloe Streit, Peter & Jan Tertzakian, Todd Towers, and Jan Wittig.

Factory Dinner Sponsor

Food & Beverage Sponsor

Andy Warhol: One Night Only Sponsor

Studio 54 Reception Sponsor

After Party Sponsor

Entertainment Sponsor

Community Partner

Travel & Accommodations Sponsor

Media Sponsor

LOOK2022 Patron

In-Kind Sponsors

3 March – 22 May 2022

Anna Binta Diallo, Atanas Bozdarov, Barbara Hobot, Adriana Kuiper & Ryan Suter, Brendan Lee Satish Tang, and Couzyn van Heuvelen.

Co-curated by Shannon Anderson and Jay Wilson

In a social and political moment where opinions are often divisive, the possibility of finding common ground can seem beyond reach. Debates over human rights, climate change, land claims, and even the politicizing of the pandemic often seem at cross-purposes and irresolvable. How do we respond in times of uncertainty—when do we push forward, when do we give up, and when do we try things differently? In The Further Apart Things Seem, artists follow distinct paths toward subtle forms of resistance, while exploring areas of connection between that which feels disconnected or in opposition. By testing the unexpected, they embrace material experimentation and provisionality as productive spaces for building resilience, resolution, and understanding.

Take a guided tour of The Further Apart Things Seem with Co-Curators Shannon Anderson and Jay Wilson

Learn more from the artists and co-curators of The Further Apart Things Seem

Unlock additional content by exploring our digital gallery and by watching special insights from the artists YouTube videos.

Generously Supported By

Supporters

In-Kind Sponsors

3 March – 22 May 2022

Artists: Laura Anzola & Matthew Waddell, Orsolya Gal, stephanie mei huang, Vishal Kumaraswamy, Yotam Peled, Catalina Tuca, Dawn Weleski, Rhonda Weppler & Trevor Mahovsky, Huidi Xiang and Cherrie Yu.

Rerouting is an exhibition of artwork stemming from the Collider: In-Residence Artist Residency, an online program inviting 12 artists from around the world to consider new modes of artistic practice, collaboration, and pandemic responses. Featuring work based in digital and online modes, sculpture, performance, and social practice, Rerouting presents alternative approaches artists make during periods of containment and isolation. In the midst of COVID 19, artists and cultural organizations found themselves scrambling to adapt to new realities, not least of which was finding a space, whether digital or physical, where art could be experienced without compromise. With the advances in digital conferencing, the Collider: In-Residence Artist Residence provided artists a timely platform with which to share their experiences with one another and develop new work in a positive, collaborative and innovative milieu.

Rerouting is the culmination of these critical discussions and artworks made directly during the residency or as a result of it. Whether exploring digital manifestations of emotions, employing bots to interrogate Artificial Intelligence, or occupying virtual lives in video games, new technologies and modes of social interaction informed many of the works in the exhibition. These digitally inspired works are balanced with something more physical as shared sourdough starter and contemplative gardens co-mingle with pom-pom making workshops and performances with kettlebells, which together, signal that in this new pandemic age, connecting and communicating with people is paramount whatever route one might take.

Take a virtual curatorial tour with Ryan Doherty.

Unlock additional content by exploring our digital gallery.

Programming Highlights

Exhibition Patrons

Erin Thrall & Peter Johnson

Supporters

In-Kind Sponsors

February 10 – Extended until March 27, 2022

Calgary-based non-profit, the Exposure Photography Festival announces its programme and exhibiting artists for its eighteenth edition of the festival, to take place throughout February 2022. Previous festivals have received over 850,000 visits and this year Exposure estimates another large audience to the extensive program of exhibitions and events hosted in galleries, local businesses, online and outdoors.

Exposure’s curated exhibitions, the International Open Call and Emerging Photographers Showcase, will be hosted at Contemporary Calgary, a significant visual arts destination dedicated to modern and contemporary art. The exhibitions present a broad range of works, including photocollage, conceptual photography, politically engaged practices and works that embrace social and individual experience, as well as visual explorations of identity and personal narratives.

The Exposure 2022 International Open Call exhibition will feature the work of photographers and visual artists based around the world who incorporate, celebrate, or challenge the photographic medium within their practices. Selected by Julie Crooks, Curator, Arts of Global Africa and the Diaspora at the Art Gallery of Ontario, the exhibition will present the works of contemporary photographers based in Canada, Argentina, Australia, China, Saudi Arabia, UK and USA.

The Exposure 2022 Emerging Photographers Showcase celebrates the rich talent of early-career practitioners who are based in the province. Selected by Hana Kaluznick, Assistant Curator in the Department of Photography at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), the exhibition presents the work of photographers based in Calgary, Edmonton, Canmore and Medicine Hat while providing an insight into our dynamic and growing community of fine art photographers here in the Alberta.

Exposure’s 2021 Emerging Photographers of the Year award recipient Joel Matthew Warkentin will be presenting new work ‘The Parable of the Boy and the Barren Olive Tree’. The exhibition is an introspective personal journey of Joel’s upbringing, both within and without the institution of the Baptist Church, explored through photography, sculpture and performance.

New for 2022, Exposure will be collaborating with Los Angeles based photo-zine publisher Hamburger Eyes on creating an exhibition and photo-zine reading space. Through an extensive display of black and white photographs that have been selected and curated by Hamburger Eyes’s Ray Potes, the exhibition captures both the unseen and iconic moments of everyday life. Local photo-zine makers will also be invited to participate in the reading space at Contemporary Calgary to celebrate the diversity of Alberta’s local zinesters.

Exposure will bring an exciting city-wide public exhibition to its audiences in Calgary. In partnership with Pattison Outdoors, Exposure Billboard will show the work of 31 international and local artists and photographers via digital billboards located throughout the city. Photographs will be hosted in three different locations for a three-week duration. Exposure continues to provide innovative ways for Calgarians to engage with the arts.

EXPOSURE 2022 INTERNATIONAL OPEN CALL

Juried by Julie Crooks, Curator of Arts of Global Africa and the Diaspora at the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Exposure 2022 International Open Call exhibition features the work of photographers and visual artists based around the world who incorporate, celebrate or challenge the photographic medium within their practices. The exhibition shows a broad range of works, including photocollage, conceptual photography, politically engaged practices and works that embrace social and individual experience, as well as visual explorations of identity and personal narratives.

Exhibiting Artists are Aljohara Jeje (Saudi Arabia), Andrea Alkalay (Argentina), Andrew Jackson (Canada/UK), Bindi Vora (UK), Diana Cheren Nygren (USA), Diana Nicholette Jeon (USA), Fang Tong (Canada), Greta Pratt (USA), Jacinta Giles (Australia), Jamie Robertson (USA), Julianna Foster (USA), Khim Hipol (Canada), Marcus Newton (USA), Sarah Barker (Australia) and Xiaofa Li (China). 

For more information on our exhibiting artists please see Exposure Festival’s website.

EXPOSURE 2022 EMERGING PHOTOGRAPHERS SHOWCASE

Juried by Hana Kaluznick, Assistant Curator in the Department of Photography at the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Emerging Photographers Showcase presents the work of fourteen photographers and visual artists based in Treaties 6,7 and 8 Territories in Alberta. The exhibition celebrates the rich talent of early-career practitioners who are based in the province while providing an insight into our dynamic and growing community of fine art photographers here in Alberta.

Exhibiting Artists are AJ Kluck, Alex Thompson, Brayden Kowalczuk, Cody Wheeler, Connor Caldwell, Daniela Szeoke, Hesamaddin Rezaei, Jeremy Fox, Leia Guo, Louie Villanueva, Manikarnika Kanjilal, Raeann Cheung, Ryan Lee, Stephan Chan and Tyler Burke.

For more information on our exhibiting artists please see HERE (LINK TO ARTIST PROFILES). 

EXPOSURE 2022 EMERGING PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR: JOEL MATTHEW WARKENTIN

Each year one artist who has exhibited in the Exposure Emerging Photographers Showcase is selected by the juror to win the Emerging Photographer of the Year Award. The recipient of this prestigious award is given the opportunity to present a solo show at the following year’s Exposure Photography Festival. The award provides the emerging artist with a platform to show their work while furthering their professional practice and building their career within photography. Exposure mentors and supports the artist in developing their vision in the best possible way. Our 2021 juror, Ryan Doherty, Chief Curator of Contemporary Calgary, selected Joel Matthew Warkentin as the 2021 Emerging Photographer of the Year.

The Parable of the Boy and the Barren Olive Tree is an introspective journey through my upbringing, both within and without the institution of the Baptist Church. Structured as a three-act play, the series of photographs and sculptures investigates the derangement my body, mind, and spirit have endured, and how this history affects present platforms surrounding my spirituality.

This collection of photographs and sculptures explores distinctive emotional memoirs collected from a young age through adolescence within a religious institution. While created through the metamorphosis of emotional feeling to objectified structure they utilize abstract language to express specific moments in history. The autobiographical and performative photographs demonstrate these events and their residual effects, while the exhibit in its entirety is an act of transformation: from impressionable, then injured, then the final and continual act of growth.

Biography

Joel Matthew Warkentin is an emerging sculptor, photographer, and performance artist. His work focuses on the connection of the spirit, movement, space, and their interaction with the human experience.

Born in Calgary, he was groomed to think in three dimensions. As a young man, he was counselled in the wood-shop by his father, and grandfathers.

His drive and ambition, from an early age, have grown with him into his adulthood and career. He acquired a Bachelors of Fine Arts, with distinction, from the Alberta University of the Arts, formerly Alberta College of Art and Design and a Masters of Fine Arts from the University of Calgary. His artwork has traveled across Canada and internationally, into galleries and exhibitions. It has transcended into various mediums, and he is currently exploring the spirituality of his work in still life. As his practice grows he is not afraid to take risks and explore his creativity beyond sculpture; his appetite for knowledge and trade has fed into the development of his practice, and his study into a universal spiritual experience.

EXPOSURE X HAMBURGER EYES EXHIBITION & PHOTO ZINE READING SPACE

New for 2022, Exposure will be collaborating with Los Angeles-based photo-zine publisher Hamburger Eyes on creating an exhibition and photo-zine reading space. Through an extensive display of black and white photographs that have been selected and curated by Hamburger Eyes Ray Potes and Exposure’s Beth Kane, the exhibition captures both the unseen and the iconic moments of everyday life. 

Alongside this exhibition, to celebrate the diversity of zinesters in the province local photo-zine makers are invited to present their work in the Alberta photo-zine reading space. To participate visit Contemporary Calgary during opening hours and drop off your work in the dedicated space.

About Hamburger Eyes

Publishing since 2001, Hamburger Eyes has developed its own signature brand of photography and provided an outlet for both up-and-coming and established photographers worldwide. Hamburger Eyes specialises in black and white photography, and has published over 200 titles of zines, magazines, and books. In 2019, Hamburger Eyes collaborated with American clothing and skateboarding lifestyle brand Supreme on launching a new publication. Also in 2019, director Aaron Rose partnered with Mailchimp to present a documentary on Hamburger Eyes and its influence on photography and self-publishing. 

Learn more about Hamburger Eyes here website & instagram

FLASH FORWARD INCUBATOR PROGRAM EXHIBITION

For the fifth consecutive year, the Exposure Photography Festival has brought the Flash Forward Incubator Program to Alberta, in partnership with the Toronto-based Magenta Foundation.

The Flash Forward Incubator Program is an extension of high school arts programming that prepares students for a successful transition out of high school and into post-secondary institutions and a careers in the arts. The program consists of four main activities that are completed online and supported by professional artists. The program has been designed to support critical and creative thinking, and to help students develop their work to show in a professional online exhibition that you can view today.  

The Flash Forward Incubator Program Exhibition features the work of students from the 2021/2022 participating schools and youth programmes including Westmount Charter School in Calgary, the Esker Foundation’s Esker Youth Engagement (EYE) in Calgary and Eastglen High School in Edmonton.

10 February – 22 May 2022

Dona Schwartz conducts a social experiment through photographic portraiture. Initially inspired by Yoko Ono’s instruction to photograph “ordinary people” Schwartz approached the prompt by interrogating its premise. Who do we consider “ordinary”? How is “ordinary” defined? Schwartz worked collaboratively with her subjects. She used a referral process that spawned multiple distinct lineages of portrait subjects, starting with people she’d met through daily dog walks. The resultant series maps social networks and the boundaries of everyday lived communities. The work poses questions about self-concepts, identities, and labels that simultaneously unite us and keep us apart.

Oxford American Writer's Thesaurus, ed. Christine A. Lindberg (Apple Dictionary App, version 2.3, 2020), s.v. “ordinary”

He's just an ordinary middle-aged man | my life seemed very ordinary: average, normal, run-of-the-mill, standard, typical, middle-of-the-road, common, conventional, mainstream, unremarkable, unexceptional, unpretentious, modest, plain, simple, homely, homespun, workaday, undistinguished, nondescript, characterless, colorless, commonplace, humdrum, mundane, unmemorable, pedestrian, prosaic, quotidian, uninteresting, uneventful, dull, boring, uninspiring, bland, suburban, hackneyed, stale, mediocre, middling, indifferent; North American garden-variety; informal OK, so-so, bog-standard, vanilla, plain vanilla, nothing to write home about, a dime a dozen, no great shakes, not up to much, corny, hacky; British informal common or garden; North American informal ornery.

Antonyms: unusual, extraordinary, unique, exceptional.

Artist Statement

Ordinary People (Like Me) is a social experiment conducted through photographic portraiture. Initially inspired by a Yoko Ono instruction to photograph “ordinary people” I expanded the project and approached the prompt by interrogating its premise. Who do we consider “ordinary”? How is “ordinary” defined? The instruction summoned an uncomfortable awareness that the act of identifying and photographing “ordinary” people would presuppose scrutiny, judgment, categorization, and privilege. 

Instead of making those judgements myself, I chose to work collaboratively. I began by photographing a handful of people I’ve met through daily dog walks, and I asked if they would recruit one or two other “ordinary” people for the project. This process spawned multiple distinct lineages of portrait subjects. I followed the referrals wherever they led me, excited to meet the next generation of “ordinary” Calgarians.

I photographed people at their homes, environments that speak to the values and experiences that play a role in shaping our lives. I worked with my subjects to identify places to shoot that would best represent who they are and how they live, whom and what they love. 

The paths the referrals traced repeatedly led back to people like me. My method failed to yield the diverse representation of “ordinary” people I had hoped would naturally materialize. Instead of branching out, the resultant series of images map existing social networks and the boundaries of everyday lived communities. The work achieves its ends by posing questions about self-concepts and identities, and the labels that simultaneously unite us and keep us apart.

Learn more about the sitters in Ordinary People (Like Me) through our digital gallery.

You’re Invited to Collaborate with the Artist on Instagram

The Ordinary People Photo Project invites the community to engage with the work of Calgary-based artist Dona Schwartz in anticipation of her upcoming solo exhibition Ordinary People (Like Me).

Extending the collaboration, members of the public can take part in the project by creating and uploading their own photo of an "ordinary" person along with a sentence defining what an "ordinary" person is. This content will be reshared to @OrdinaryPeopleYYC and it will be featured in the exhibition.

To learn more and take part in this project, please see @OrdinaryPeopleYYC

To see examples of submissions, please see #OrdinaryPeopleYYC

Instructions

1. Take a photo of an ordinary person
2. Complete the sentence “An ordinary person is ______________.”
3. Upload your photo and completed sentence to your own Instagram with #OrdinaryPeopleYYC

Once you’ve uploaded your content to Instagram, the Ordinary People Project Team will select photos to re-post on the @OrdinaryPeopleYYC page. They’ll notify you via Instagram message if they post your photo.

For the project’s terms and conditions, please see our Terms & Conditions post.

About the Artist

Dona Schwartz is a photographic artist based in Calgary, Alberta. She received her PhD from the Annenberg School for Communications at the University of Pennsylvania with a focus on photography and ethnography. Through her photographic work she examines definitions of family, evolving identity, social bonds and boundaries. Proceeding from her perspective as a visual ethnographer, her investigations involve long-term engagement with subjects, resulting in richly layered photographic series and narratives. Inspired as a teenager by the work of André Kertész, she approaches photography with insight, wit, and humour.

Her award-winning photographs have been exhibited and published internationally. She has authored four books: Waucoma Twilight: Generations of the Farm (Smithsonian,1992), Contesting the Super Bowl (Routledge, 1997), In the Kitchen (Kehrer, 2009) and On the Nest (Kehrer, 2015). Her work is included in the collections of the United States Library of Congress; the Museum of Fine Arts Houston; the Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne; the George Eastman Museum; the Center for Creative Photography; the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas-Austin; the Portland Art Museum; and the Kinsey Institute, Indiana University. Schwartz is Professor, Department of Art, University of Calgary. She is represented by Stephen Bulger Gallery, Toronto.

Programming Highlights

Supporters

In-Kind Sponsors

4 November 2021 – 30 January 2022

A series of paintings by Corri-Lynn Tetz, with monosyllabic titles such as Piano, Heels, and Ghost, depict women in various stages of contemplation. They share a palette as well—as if rose-coloured glasses were swapped out for a cool blue lens, dusting its subject with built-in melancholia. The monochrome greys and blues read like an x-ray—offering an interior perspective. 

Are these women sad? Bored? Worried? The habit of showing beautiful women, especially in erotic images, as happy creates a flatness that Tetz fights against. Instead, Tetz portrays the underlying condition of the subjects’ glossy exterior. In Flower a woman looks down at the flower she is holding next to her vulva, her legs open. She is wearing a delicate chemise and her bangs are swept to the side as she sits on a bed of fun fur. The spectrum of textures is deftly painted by Tetz in a limited colour palette. The figure’s hand is hovering a few inches from her cheek in resignation mixed with boredom. The flower does not seem to give her any pleasure. The metaphor is almost too easy to draw. 

The French writer Hervé Guibert captures the soft suggestion of erotic photographs in his 1982 book of essays Ghost Image. “What excited me in this picture, which was really quite chaste and mimicked the studio pose of a baby’s pink and powdered behind, were the breasts that were not shown, and especially to imagine the contact between the breasts and fur, of those two soft globes being compressed by a material even more diabolically soft,” he writes. The description could easily fit a number of paintings by Tetz. The tactile surroundings—full of mirrors and fauna, armchairs and silk—allow the viewer to situate themselves in the aesthetically dense environment of the recent past. Slightly patinated by time, the paintings excite in their removal from everyday reality. 

Guibert goes on to differentiate between erotic images, which the viewer projects their fantasies onto, and pornographic images, which are static and therefore damper the viewer’s ability to project. The literal quality of porn is dictated by the gaze and imagination of the photographer. Tetz’s paintings are firmly in the camp of the erotic—Tetz allows the viewer mobility to explore the content matter.

The paintings in Art Lover, span from 2019 to 2021 and are painted primarily from archival images from the 80s and 90s. Divorced from the original source material, the gaze is reclaimed from the (primarily) male photographers. Tetz transposes her gaze on top of the existing image and shifts the focus; contemplation and sentiment emerge. In Crane, the model’s face is hidden, cut off by the top of the canvas. Even without facial cues, the impact resonates. With a hand on a knee and feet arched, the figure retains a powerful agency. This is a credit to Tetz’s deftness with a brushstroke and understanding of people’s deep physiological need to be seen. 

Alongside the scantily clad figures and lush settings, accessories are abound in these paintings. Notably: high heels, mirrors, tights, and tan lines. Despite the softness of the bodies, the accessories present an erotic fixation on the performative actions of femininity. Via props, the models take on the role of the helpless heroine or mischievous nymphette. Often both. The coded nature of femininity, sex, and desire, create familiar narratives.

While the subject captivates (as naked people tend to do), these are painting-first paintings. Tetz’s attention to the application of paint grants her the ability to explore complicated, and perhaps controversial, subject matter. If squinting slightly, the looseness of the figure blurs and becomes a series of swift brushstrokes in diffused colours. The result is paintings that drip with atmosphere, distinct with aura.. The role of the body and sex takes on a secondary role to the complex emotional life that’s captured in pigment—without discounting the possibility of the female form as sensuous, feminine, and sexual. In Tetz’s work, emotional gravity and the complexity of performed femininity are centre-fold.

– Text by Tatum Dooley

Corri-Lynn Tetz works as a painter, focusing on the female figure as a way to explore identity, sensation and desire. Borrowing from personal archives, fashion photography, film and pornography, she is interested in the ways images and meaning are transformed through painting and how this process disrupts notions of the gaze to re-imagine pictorial space.

Invested in ritual, communal intimacy and strange mystical events, Tetz’s paintings are drawn from the romantic histories of a figure in landscape and the seemingly endless possibilities of surface and form. Evoking memory or a distant, artificial arcadia, the affect is often more poetic than narrative—with bodies and nature activated through inventive figuration, high key and muted colour combinations, abstract interventions and intuitive gestures. Tetz’s works speak to the history of painting, assumptions of viewership and authorship, as well as the ways she sees the performance of femininity both absorbed and rejected.

Biography

Corri-Lynn Tetz
(she/her)

Corri-Lynn Tetz was born in Calgary, Alberta and now lives and works in Montreal. She studied at Red Deer College, Emily Carr and most recently graduated from the MFA program at Concordia University. Tetz has received project support from the Conseil des Art et des Lettres du Québec, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation, and in 2016, was awarded the Brucebo Residency Fellowship. Her work was featured in The Magenta Foundation’s Carte Blanche: A Survey of Canadian Painting and in 2012, she was a finalist is in the RBC Painting Competition. Tetz’s paintings have been exhibited across Canada, Sweden and the United States, with acquisitions made by the Senvest Collection and Equity Bank among others.

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Barbara Palmer

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4 November 2021 – 30 January 2022

Maya Beaudry’s site-specific installation The Pergola considers the idea of interiority and containment as it relates to the natural and the built environment. Wrapped in a fabric printed with photographs of dwelling spaces, and buttressed by an organic wire growth, the pergola offers a structural fluidity of being between inside and outside; and between intention and spontaneity. The photographic fabric embodies the man-made along with all the memories of places lived and imagined, while the wound wire suggests a more instinctual, natural and fungal growth. Punctuating this threshold is Beaudry’s interest in investigating the potentiality of alternative architecture—one that is laborious, hand-made, somewhat enigmatic, and is in opposition to the dominant discourse.

Beaudry’s practice draws largely on the language of patterns in urban design and architecture. Fused with organic interruptions, she complicates the logic of the grid—that pervasive infrastructure that has become synonymous with urban living, from the block, and city to the pixels on our screens. The Pergola then can also be understood as a portrait of a hypercomplex system that mediates planned and entropic growth, safety and entanglement. It is a way to find meaning in how we inhabit spaces.

The Pergola, Text by Kayla Ephros

The pergola, Maya says, sounds like something between purgatory and parabola. The pergola surrounds— sonically, structurally. The pergola is haunted (by the potential energy for company). The pergola is something between a purification and a math phenomena, it’s the suburbs, it’s somebody’s grandmother’s glory. For our purposes, the pergola is a stand-in for Structure in general, where human scale meets the meta human propensity for growth— the way the roses climb our vision.

Maya’s studio practice is all PE (potential energy) in that every material is on limits and affected, poised to become a puzzle piece. The PE is also a party—I’ve had fomo, wanted to come. She slides into a syrupy solitude that is clearly Home, a housewarming ever and over feat. DJ Cosmic Questions.

Moved by a sort of stoned apophenia, meaning gets made and dragged through repeated art actions (brushstrokes, the sewing needle). This dimension of dot connection is both earthly and otherwise. During these sessions, Maya’s mythology unfolds, the space fills to its edges with fabric (earthly and—), a colour palette evoking a childhood that isn’t mine, but one I can viscerally visit, with its heartbreak, ghosts, water, joy.

The perpetual housewarming is aspirational. The way we have to keep believing in home as a sense in order to stay light, and right with truth. Maya’s ethereal homemaking is grand, looping, she turns the home from goal to muse, and with regular, often soft supplies, spins her playful critique.

A Pattern Language (a brick of a book with bible energy and status), celebrates design being taken into the hands of the commons, and encourages a de compartmentalization of Structure. The first page I flip to reads…prepare to knit the inside of the building to the outside, by treating the edge between the two as a place in its own right, and making human details there;…

When the edge becomes a place, receiving agency and attention, there is suddenly another place to be, not the Here nor There that we are automatically obsessed with. I think of Maya’s wall works where the frame functions as a continuation of what isn’t the frame, collapsing in and out, blending art with Art, pointing to a growth like the roses on the pergola. The fabric used in these pieces is printed with craigslist ads for sublets, mostly carpeted plus vertical blinds. Once the fabric is incorporated, the windows of the rooms emerge as an uncanny light source, leaking moments of daylight onto the frame that is holding itself, its own.

French painter Odilon Redon (1840-1916) says, place the logic of the visible at the service of the invisible, and Maya tells me she’s sold. I’m back at the edge, more specifically, the perpetual edge of childhood, carbonated by the invisible, for instance, the fort (the pergola). PE in all corners, logic half baked (wafting). I think of all the Octobers, the warm orange ball of them, when we submit to Spirit in commodified agreement, how some say, the veil is thin. October in a store-bought frame and the ghosts mock our fake return tickets. The edges ignored, overlooked.

If logic came equipped with its own question mark? Like: logic?

The clash of its iterations?

Maya lets Terence McKenna’s lectures wash over her and so do I. He says something about perspective, how we might think it’s just our position in the room that creates difference, but regardless, our individual experiences of that room are infinitely nuanced. In my head I’m singing…door to another door to another door…and then he says, we are caged by our cultural programming. Culture is a mass hallucination…

In the pergola, (we’re also out, of course), the butterflies come for the roses. We’re on the brink of comfort for several reasons. The butterflies…have several lenses, can see in many directions at once.

Then a breeze, a new edge.

Terence says…culture, which we put on like an overcoat…

The logic? of the butterfly. There are coats everywhere.

But, the logic of heartbreak— my experience has never evoked actual breakage, no shattering, no dismantling. The other day my “broken” heart was a t-shirt, gathered in handfuls and tightly wound with rubber bands, as if prepared for tie-dye. If only a cool dip in those colours. The broken heart (from childhood) is the pergola made visible by Novelty (art). To have a seat there, reflect on its impossible wholeness, the maximalist patchwork— say the words until your body absorbs their shape.

Maya says, the concept of habit and novelty encompasses everything I think about the world, which is... not much. Just ideas about patterns and growth. The not much strikes my midnight, and I’m at the party too.

Biography

Maya Beaudry
(she/her)

Maya Beaudry is based in Vancouver, BC. She received a BFA from Emily Carr University of Art and Design in 2013 and an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 2017. She has exhibited work in Canada, the United States, Germany and France, with solo exhibitions in Berlin and Marseille. She was the recipient of the Hnatyshyn Foundation William and Meredith Saunderson Prize for Emerging Artists, the Felix Gonzales Torres Foundation Travel Grant, the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts/CD Howe Award, and has participated in residencies at Triangle France in Marseille and September Spring at the Kesey Farm.

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Exhibition Benefactors

David & Scarlett Neill

Exhibition Patron

George Baptist

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4 November 2021 – 30 January 2022

Artists: Wes Bell, Richard Boulet, Jane Grace, Riisa Gundesen, Brad Necyk & Marilyn Olson

Curated by Dick Averns  

Produced by SITEcPROJECTS, the creative arm of the Organization for Bipolar Affective Disorders (OBAD)

Perspectives From Within is a major group exhibition featuring visual artwork critically engaging with mental health. All artworks are based on lived experience of mental illness, with six artists bringing compelling insight into the highs and lows of their circumstances. Depression, anxiety, addiction, self-harm, bipolar disorders, and schizophrenia underpin artworks revealing enhanced personal self-reflection, supporting individual and collective mental wellbeing for audiences and producers alike.

Many artists face struggles in their lives but not all take the step of producing work that actively portrays their inner realities, to their peers, in an external manner. As such, Perspectives From Within is both a literal and metaphorical undertaking, for which the artworks and public programs stand as not just a dynamic process of reflection but a reminder that we are not alone. This approach aligns with the activities of exhibition producers SITE c PROJECTS and OBAD, including free, weekly, peer support groups in the Calgary community for anyone, including family members, who may be impacted by mood disorders.

Curated by Dick Averns, Perspectives From Within features video, painting, textiles, film, sculpture and photography. Artworks are installed to create an immersive installation, using light and form to produce an emotive, labyrinthine experience. The interweaving of artists’ works is indicative of the fact that mental illness can be lonely, but a shared vision for mental health can engage audiences to make a positive impact on the way community wellness is addressed in our world.

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4 November 2021 – 30 January 2022

Simone Elizabeth Saunders explores personal history, Afro-diaspora, and Black sisterhood through bold and colourful textiles. Borrowing motifs and iconography from her Jamaican heritage, art history, literature, music and current events, she creates tufted portraits of singular figures, each a montage of powerful, inspirational Black bodies that collectively surface as a strong and resilient community. Portraits such as Lady Justice, young, courageous and keepin' six, or Four Queens, recalling Alphonse Mucha’s Art Nouveau work Precious Stones, reconsider iconic figures and gestures in a contemporary light. Lady Justice takes a knee echoing Black Lives Matter and the senseless deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor amongst so many others, while the Four Queens pose seductively and defiantly above calls for Black Love, Black Dreams, Black Magic and Black Power. This unabashed presence is common throughout all her works, at once challenging the viewer and demanding to be seen.

Saunders further amplifies her subjects with dynamic backgrounds that often employ feminist expressions from moons and circular motifs to blossoming flowers suggesting cycles and connections to nature. Totems are frequently included – predatory animals such as lions, leopards and snakes become emblems of strength and grace. And yet, her works manifest a compelling tension between the powerful connotations of her imagery and colour palette with the soft tactility of her material. Hand tufting her works, threads of acrylic, wool, velvet and more, introduce a tender dimension—a sensitive, vulnerable and enticing facet to dismantle the misperceptions of Black women. Furthermore, the mingling of individual threads of yarn brought together into a collective whole echoes the interconnectedness of her subjects. As much as these powerful portraits connote Black joy and resilience, it is how they are woven together into narratives of connection that, for Saunders, offers herself and others a potent sense of belonging.

Biography

Simone Elizabeth Saunders
(she/her)

Simone Elizabeth Saunders (she/her) is a textile artist based in Calgary, Alberta. She holds a B.F.A. from the Alberta University of Arts 2020. Her textiles are hand tufted in the medium of rug-making. Saunders explores themes of the diaspora, ancestorship and Black womanhood. Her colourful textiles highlight motifs and iconography from her Jamaican heritage and engage with sociocultural factors reclaiming power from oppressive ideologies. Saunders has a career in the theatre arts, weaving her experiences and integrating dramatism and story-telling within her creations - uplifting narratives of Black joy and resilience.

Simone was named the National Winner for the Bank of Montreal’s 1st Art Competition in 2020. Simone has been internationally featured, select media credits include: Create Magazine, Canada’s House&Home Magazine, CBC Arts, CBCq, Boooooom, Uppercase Magazine, Pom-Pom Magazine (England), FairLady (South Africa), Surface Design Journal, Colossal and DesignMilk (USA). Most recent exhibitions include the Alberta Craft Council for the Arts and Art Museum University of Toronto. Simone has been collected by several international museums and her emerging series will debut at Contemporary Calgary.

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Exhibition Benefactor

Dr. John R. Lacey, CM

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