memorias: a work in progress

Florencia Berinstein

A Space Windows

October 19 – November 12, 2005

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This installation project is a contemplation on the immigratory experience and a work-in-progress of a larger exploration on the same topic. Divided up into four themes: departure (la salida), the journey (el pasaje), arrival (la llegada) and settlement (el establecimiento), each window contrasts, through pictures, photographs and text, some of the myriad of feelings that accompany each of these different phases of immigration. An exploration of the artist’s personal journey from Argentina, this work touches on the complexities of re-settling elsewhere, particularly when it’s premeditated by political upheaval.

Biographies

Florencia Berinstein is a Toronto-based artist who has been engaged with community based visual arts practices for over 12 years. During this time, her work has been concerned with questions of the role of the artist in society, the role of art in community/public space as a transformative tool for social change and questioning the homogeneity of public art/political artists’ projects to date. She received a BFA from Concordia University, Montreal and an MA in Art in Public Space from RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. The artist has received awards from the Toronto Arts Council, the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council, and has been the recipient of a Chalmers Professional Development Grant, and the KM Hunter award for Visual Arts. Florencia is the current Festival Coordinator of the Mayworks Festival of Working People and the Arts.