Race | Space | Place
Ali Kazimi
A Space Main Gallery
September 17 – October 16, 2021
Essay by: Maya Wilson-Sanchez
Gallery hours during the exhibition Tuesday to Friday, 11AM to 5PM and Saturday 12 to 5PM.
Artist in attendance on Saturday October 16 from noon to 5pm. Ali Kazimi will be giving tours to visitors.
Ali Kazimi’s first solo exhibition is proudly presented by A Space Gallery. This multi-media show consists of two stereoscopic 3D installations Unseen (2021) and Fair Play (2014). The works bring to life rarely documented histories of South Asians in Canada. Using the works of Caravaggio, Edward Hopper, and Rene Magritte as points of departure, Kazimi’s work seeks to transmute these iconic Western artworks, as he explores ideas of presence, race and representation as well as the intersection of theatre, cinema and painting.
Biographies
In 2019, Ali Kazimi was honoured with the Governor General’s Award the most prestigious distinction for excellence in visual and media arts in Canada for over three decades of ground-breaking work as a documentary filmmaker and media artist whose work deals with race, social justice, migration, history and memory. His film Continuous Journey (2004), alongside his book, Undesirables: White Canada and the Komagata Maru (2011), have played a key role in shedding light on the forgotten histories of early South Asian immigration to Canada.
Kazimi’s films have received over two dozen national and international honours and awards, been screened in prestigious festivals and broadcast nationally and internationally. From 2009 to 2017 he was engaged in a ground breaking multidisciplinary research project in 3D cinema at York University.
Kazimi is an Associate Professor in the Department of Cinema & Media Arts.
Maya Wilson-Sanchez is an independent curator and writer based in Toronto and currently the Associate Editor at C Magazine. She has worked in numerous galleries and museums, including the Art Gallery of Ontario, Gallery TPW, and MKG127, and has curated exhibitions at Xpace Cultural Centre, the Royal Ontario Museum, Pride Toronto, and the Art Gallery of Guelph. In 2019, she was an Editorial Resident at Canadian Art and a Curatorial Resident at the Art Museum at the University of Toronto. The 2020 recipient of the Middlebrook Prize for Young Canadian Curators, she is currently curating a year-long exhibition series for the City of Toronto’s Year of Public Art.