Born in Upsala, Ontario, Rebecca Belmore is an artist currently living in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Since 1987, her multi-disciplinary work has addressed history, place and identity through the media of sculpture, installation, video and performance. She is internationally recognized for her performance and installation art, and was Canada’s official representative at the 2005 Venice Biennale.
Ken Gonzales-Day’s interdisciplinary and conceptually grounded projects consider the history of photography, the construction of race, and the limits of representational systems ranging from the lynching photograph to museum display. Gonzales-Day lives in Los Angeles and is Chair of the Art Department at Scripps College.
Francisco-Fernando Granados is a Guatemalan-born, Toronto-based artist, writer and educator working in performance, video, drawing, cultural criticism, teaching, and curatorial practice. He currently contributes as a member of the Editorial Committee for FUSE magazine. He is also a member of the 7a11d International Performance Festival Collective in Toronto.
Louise Noguchi challenges her audience with themes that pose psychological questions. Using photography, sculpture, video and other media, Noguchi’s concepts confront the spectator’s notions of identity, perception and reality. She is a professor in the Art and Art History program, a collaborative joint program between Sheridan Institute and the University of Toronto Mississauga where she teaches photography and performance-based art.
Liz Park is a curator and writer committed to creating discursive spaces and generating forums to engage an audience with discussions of contemporary political and social realities. She received a Masters of Arts in Art History Curatorial Studies at the University of British Columbia. In 2011/2012, she was Helena Rubinstein Fellow in the Curatorial Program at the Whitney Independent Study Program.
MARIANNE NICOLSON, LIZ PARK
February 13, 2013
Friday February 15, 2013, 7PM, World Art Centre, 2nd Floor, SFU Woodwards, 149 West Hastings Co-presented by SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement
Artspeak is pleased to launch Invisible Violence, a publication and discursive project guest-curated by Liz Park. In conjunction with the launch will be a talk by Victoria-based artist Marianne Nicolson.
Designed to incite thoughtful conversations about the representation of violence and its politicization today, this multi-part project consists of: publication of the artists’ work as a sequence of 5”x7” cards; a series of discursive events conceived as points of distribution for the publication; and a web hub that archives reflections on the discussions that take place at each event. As a set of provocations, the parts collectively evaluate the political conditions of the production, circulation and consumption of violent images.
Invisible Violence, brings together the work of four artists—Rebecca Belmore, Ken Gonzales-Day,Francisco-Fernando Granados, and Louise Noguchi—who use photography as a point of reference for histories of violence that inform a contemporary politics of representation. Their work intentionally covers, erases, withdraws or cuts apart the main subject of the photographs, delaying the recognition of the structural and systemic violence underlying each image. Taking this interruption as its starting point, the project asks that “we”—the audience who are informed by contemporary mediascape riddled with images of violence—problematize the first person pronoun. As Susan Sontag writes, “No ‘we’ should be taken for granted when the subject is looking at other people’s pain.”
All events are free and open to the public. Publication distributed free at the events. A series of commissioned texts in the form of blog posts will summarize and respond to each of the events below:
February 15: Artspeak in partnership with Simon Fraser University Community Engagement, Vancouver, BC, CA
February 20: Gallery TPW, Toronto, ON, CA
February 27: CEREVCentre for Ethnographic Research and Exhibition in the Aftermath of Violence at Concordia University, Montreal, QC, CA
March 2: Center for Photography at Woodstock, Woodstock, NY
For more information about launch dates and events, please visit: www.gallerytpw.ca/rd/invisible-violence. This project was produced by Artspeak, with web component by Gallery TPW, and curatorial research support from Center for Photography at Woodstock.
If you would like to obtain a copy of the publication, but are unable to attend the events, please inquire about the availability of a copy by email: info@artspeak.ca
Artspeak gratefully acknowledges project support from the Audain Foundation.
Invisible Violence
Title: Invisible Violence
Category: Criticism
Artists: Rebecca Belmore, Francisco-Fernando Granados, Ken Gonzales-Day, Louise Noguchi
Writers: Liz Park
Design: Jen Eby
Publisher: Gallery TPW, Artspeak
Printer: Hemlock Printers
Year published: 2013
Edition: 200
Pages: 12pp
Cover: Printed Cardstock Sleeve
Binding: Staple Bound
Process: Digital Offset
Features: 11 colour postcards, 5 b&w postcards
Dimensions: 13 x 18.5 x 1.2 cm
Weight: 164 g
Price: sold out