[ESC] Electronic Social Culture
Neena Arora, Eliza Au, Shelly Bahl, Roselina Hung, Santichart Kusakulsomsak, Donato Mancini, Pravin Pillay, Jeremy Turner, Sakun Samarakoon, Gary Wang
A Space Main Gallery
June 24 – July 31, 2004
Curated by: Sylvia Grace Borda, Gu Xiong
Copresented by: Centre A (Vancouver), SAVAC (South Asian Visual Arts Collective)
[ESC] marks the culmination of a partnership project with The Vancouver Centre for Contemporary Asian Art (Centre A) and the South Asian Visual Arts Collective (SAVAC). A Space Gallery is pleased to be the presenting venue for this exciting exhibition in Toronto.
One of the persistent themes of international contemporary artistic production remains the investigation of the place of culture within processes of globalisation. As artists respond to these issues, the place of imagination begins to play a crucial role in investigations of intra-cultural, trans-cultural and inter-cultural notions. This allows for critical examinations of the in-between spaces through which culture eludes and plays with processes of globalisation. As the critical site of agency, the artists provoke resistance and irony in an effort to elude the homogenising tendencies of market-globalisation. The work in [ESC] explores how globalisation has changed our conception of culture. With countries in Asia gaining increasing economic and political power as a result of globalisation, how does this affect the arts, both within Asia and outside? Does economic and political power translate into cultural authority? Through various media including video, sound, photography, installation and internet projects, the artists in [ESC] have produced work that engages with these crucial issues.