IGNITION 17 exhibition

IGNITION 17 features Pedro Barbáchano, Snack Witch aka Joni Cheung, Jin Heewoong, Kevin Jung-Hoo Park, Christy Kunitzky, Laurel Rennie, Aman Sandhu & Holly Timpener.

Projects selected by Marie Martraire and Michèle Thériault.

Back after a one-year hiatus, the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery is happy to present its 17th edition of its annual exhibition IGNITION. The selection was made by guest curator Marie Martraire director of collections and special programs at Kadist in San Francisco as well as doctoral student at Concordia in film and moving image and Michèle Thériault, director.

The proposals are made by students in the MFA Studio Arts and the PhD Humanities programs. This event provides an up-and-coming generation of artists a unique opportunity to present the result of their research in the context of a professional gallery with a national and international profile.

“The eight artists in IGNITION 17 share their personal lived experiences, political reflections, and poetic engagements with realities that have affected us and our communities for centuries: experiences of migration, (mis/non)representation of our identities and histories, power relations, and unconscious biases. Their installation, photographs, texts, moving images, or textile works not only decry long-standing problems catalyzed by the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, they also propose strategies such as collective actions, radical care, and self-work to effect structural, institutional, and personal change.”

- Marie Martraire