Monitor Reruns
Nurjahan Akhlaq, Ayesha Hameed, P. Mansaram, Vivek Shraya, The Torontonians
A Space Main Gallery
March 28 – May 3, 2014
Curated by: Shai Heredia
Copresented by: Images Festival, SAVAC
Curator Talk with Shai Heredia & Srimoyee Mitra: Friday April 11, 3 - 4 PM
A Space Gallery is proud to partner with SAVAC (South Asian Visual Arts Centre) and the Images Festival to present Monitor Reruns. The exhibition brings together five Canadian artists whose works represent the last decade of Monitor and engage with themes ranging from personal narratives of trauma to accounts of colonial history, migration and queerness. Monitor Reruns looks to the past to reinterpret the politics, histories and identities that continue to shape the South Asian diaspora and subcontinent.
Related Events:
Monitor 10: New South Asian Short Film + Video takes place on April 24th, 2014, 7 – 9 PM. Jackman Hall, 317 Dundas St. West, Toronto. http://www.savac.net/
The 27th annual Images Festival will take place in Toronto from April 10-19, 2014. http://www.imagesfestival.com
Biographies
Nurjahan Akhlaq is an artist and filmmaker based in Toronto, Canada. Her films have screened at festivals internationally and have won numerous awards. She has a BFA in Filmmaking from Concordia University, Montreal and an MFA from Goldsmiths College, London.
Ayesha Hameed is an artist and writer who is a Lecturer and Joint Programme Leader in Fine Art and History of Art in the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her practice includes performance, video and text, and examines borders, migration and detention. Her essays have been published in Photoworks (2011), Place: Location and Belonging in New Media Contexts (2008), The Sarai Reader (2013), and Tate ETC (2010).
P. Mansaram completed his studies at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Amsterdam in 1964, and has exhibited internationally ever since. He has worked extensively with Marshall McLuhan over the course of two decades, championing digital film and the photographic image, in addition to his collage work. His work is housed in the collections of the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Dehli and the Art Gallery of Hamilton.
Vivek Shraya is a Toronto-based multidisciplinary artist working in music, performance, literature and film. His most recent film, What I LOVE about being QUEER, has expanded to include an online project and book with contributions from around the world. God Loves Hair, Vivek’s first collection of short stories, was a 2011 Lambda Literary Award finalist, won the Applied Arts Award for Illustration in 2010, and is currently being used as a textbook at several post-secondary institutions.
The Torontonians are a Parkdale-based art collective, working in collaboration with research-art atelier Mammalian Diving Reflex. They create performances, give lectures, make videos, dance on the street, hassle drunk guys, take photographs, check cell phones, sing songs, play cellos, draw bunnies, take the TTC, ride BMX and do volunteer hours.
Shai Heredia is a filmmaker and curator of film art. She founded Experimenta –
the international festival for experimental cinema in India – in 2003 in Mumbai. Over the years, she has rapidly developed the festival into a significant international forum for artists’ film and video. Shai has also curated experimental film programmes for various film festivals. Shai holds an MA in documentary film from Goldsmiths College, London. She is currently a Programme Executive at the India Foundation for the Arts, Bangalore.