Nothing Is Ever Enough
Main Gallery
January 26 – March 10, 2018
Essay by: Christina Rousseau
Performance at the Opening Reception at 6:30 Sharp
A woman’s body has never been political. A woman’s body has never been powerful. A woman’s body is a distraction. A woman’s body belongs to everyone. There is no value inherent in this work. It is invisible and it is expected. It isn’t work.
Nothing Is Ever Enough is an installation that references a domestic space and illuminates the ways it is inherently a work space. This compels us to think about the tenuous boundaries that exist between physical and emotional work as well as between our work lives and private lives. This solo exhibition at A Space Gallery is personal and emotional, and positions the gendered body as one poised for failure and scrutiny.
Camilla Singh’s new installation continues forth from her broader practice in which work is seen as a dominant force in people’s lives, playing a leading role in shaping modes of conduct and behavior. It extends into thinking about emotional and physical work as well as injury and recovery in both a work and home context. How are we defined by professionalism or its absence, and the historical exclusion of women’s intellect, experience and voices in devising the systems we inhabit?
Camilla Singh is a curator and multi-disciplinary artist whose practice includes installation, sculpture, drawing, photo and audio-based work, as well as performance, movement and collaboration. She is one half of the band MORTIFIED with dancer/choreographer Jenn Goodwin. Singh is the former Assistant Director/Curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto (2002 – 09) and holds an MFA in Contemporary Studio Practice from the Dutch Art Institute in the Netherlands. She serves on the External Advisory Committee for Nuit Blanche in Toronto. She currently lives in Abu Dhabi.
Christina Rousseau is an activist, dancer and PhD candidate in Humanities at York University. She is currently writing about the formation of socialist-feminist movements in the 1970s. Her approach to research is concerned with rediscovering female voices by emphasizing the importance of life writing, narratives and oral history.
