Ignition 13's unexpected multimedia encounters
Boris Dumesnil-Poulin, No Man is an Island, 2017 | Installation detail courtesy of the artist
Gender, colonialism, social media, cultural heritage and the circulation of capital are just some of the themes visitors will encounter at IGNITION 13, the latest exhibition at Concordia’s Leonard and Bina Ellen Art Gallery.
The show features seven emerging artists enrolled in the Studio Arts or Humanities graduate programs at Concordia — Brett Barmby, Boris Dumesnil-Poulin, Francisco Gonzalez-Rosas, Annie Katsura Rollins, Marion Lessard, Zinnia Naqvi and Naghmeh Sharifi.
According to Shauna Janssen, who co-curated the show with gallery director Michèle Thériault, their works were purposefully selected to represent a range of artistic motivations.
“The exhibition provokes an engagement with performative, materially and conceptually diverse practices, inviting viewers to make their own associations with these kinds of experimental gestures,” she says.
Zinnia Naqvi, From the installation Dear Nani, 2017 | Image courtesy of the artist
Barmby’s series of eight diagrams titled Summer Abroad, for example, traces the daily circulation of commodities and information by mapping his delivery routes as a bike courier.
Rollins, meanwhile, focuses on Chinese shadow puppetry. Immaterial Remains is a series of four lo-fi shadow “boxes” that question the cultural preservation of performative folk art forms.
"Collectively, the works create immersive, cartographic, theatrical and photographic spaces for unexpected encounters between bodies and virtual environments, objects and storytelling, personal histories and fiction, the city and subjectivity," Janssen says.
IGNITION is an annual exhibition dedicated to an up-and-coming generation of artists. It’s a unique opportunity to present ambitious, interdisciplinary works in the professional context of a gallery with a national and international profile.
IGNITION 13 opens on Wednesday, April 19 at 5:30 p.m. at the Leonard and Bina Ellen Art Gallery (1400 De Maisonneuve Blvd. W.) on Concordia’s Sir George Williams Campus. (RSVP by email: ellen.artgallery@concordia.ca) Artist presentations start at 4:30 p.m. The exhibition will be on view until May 27.
