On Migration
Brendan Fernandes, Mona Kamal
A Space Main Gallery
September 7 – October 12, 2007
Essay by: Elaine Chang
The term ‘migration’ both evokes and complicates relationships between definable temporal and spatial coordinates; the duration and location of any migration are at once indeterminate and over-determined. Brendan Fernandes and Mona Kamal re-enact the liminal spaces and time zones of migration in their new works. In a sense, these artists offer multiple unanswerable variations on a question familiar to survivors of the North American family road trip: ’Are we there yet?’ A shared interrogation of what it truly means to arrive serves to link their distinctive installations, as does their engagement with tensions between stillness and motion, permanence and impermanence, and ’home’ and ’not-home.’
Biographies
Born in Kenya of Indian heritage, Brendan Fernandes immigrated to Canada in the 1990s. He earned his MFA (2005) from The University of Western Ontario and his BFA (2002) from York University in Canada. Accolades include: grants from The Ontario and Canada Councils for the Arts including the prestigious International Residency in Trinidad and Tobago. In 2007 he will have three solo shows across Canada and has been invited to exhibit in the Western New York Biennial at The Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, NY. Fernandes recently completed the Independent Study Program of the Whitney Museum of American Art, and is presently participating in The Lower Manhattan Cultural CouncilÕs Work Space Residency program. He currently resides in New York and continues to exhibit both nationally and internationally.
Mona Kamal is a visual artist. Within her art practice she creates monumental installations that explore her ancestry within a modern Canadian construct. She has received several grants for her installation projects through the Ontario Art Council and the Toronto Arts Council. Mona is currently a member of SAVAC and sat on their programming committee for two years. She is also on the Board of Directors at A Space Gallery. Mona is actively involved in community arts projects and works with children and youth in the St. James Town community. She has an upcoming residency at the Sanskri Foundation in New Delhi, India and an upcoming solo exhibition at the York Quay Centre in Toronto. She has exhibited in Toronto and New York.