The Days We Sang

Ibrahim Abusitta, Amanda Boulos

A Space Main Gallery

May 17 – June 29, 2024

Opening Reception May 17, 2024, 6:00 pm–8:00 pm

Curated by: Vicky Moufawad-Paul

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Painting requires patience and attention to understand and stands in contrast to the continual stream of horrific photographs and videos we are seeing from Palestine. Visual poetry and allegory in Amanda Boulos and Ibrahim Abusitta paintings afford some freedom in the latitude they use to communicate during the current genocide. Both Boulos and Abusitta have family in Palestine and are negotiating multiple complex relational and emotional proximities. May our grieving one day end and let us look backwards and forwards towards the days we sang.

Biographies

Ibrahim Abusitta (he/him) is a Toronto-based visual artist with a diverse background in both photography and painting. His works intricately blend elements of color, texture, memory, and time, inviting viewers into a contemplative space. Graduating with a BFA from OCAD University in 2013, he has since exhibited his art in space such as The Next Contemporary (Toronto, ON), Sovern (Los Angeles, CA), and Smoke the Moon (Santa Fe, NM). Notably, his contributions extend beyond the canvas; in 2020, Abusitta offered insights into BIPOC representation in commercial galleries through his writing for Canadian Art magazine. Recently, his painting ‘Head Space 33’ was chosen as the cover art for The Malahat Review, a Canadian quarterly literary magazine.

Amanda Boulos (she/her) is a visual artist and educator based in Tkaronto/Toronto. Engaging with national narratives from Palestine, Lebanon, and Canada, Boulos explores how fragmented narratives found in oral Palestinian archives do not align with a grand national narrative, but instead morph and shift into what she would like to think is the future of the Palestinian diaspora/shattat. Amanda Boulos received her MFA from the University of Guelph in 2017 and BFA from York University in 2013. She has shown at Blouin Division (Toronto, ON), The Bows (Calgary, AB), Galerie Nicolas Robert (Montréal, QC), and Arsenal Contemporary Art (New York, NY). Boulos is the winner of the 20th RBC Canadian Painting Competition and the recent Isabel Pope Artist resident at NSCAD University (Halifax, NS). She is a member of the Toronto project space the plumb and a programmer for the Toronto Palestine Film Festival.

Vicky Moufawad-Paul (she/her) is a Toronto based curator and writer. She is the Director/Curator at A Space Gallery. She has curated exhibitions at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Carlton University Art Gallery, Gallery 101, MAI: Montreal arts interculturels, Latitude 53, Museum London, McIntosh Gallery, Contact Photography Festival, InterAccess Electronic Media Arts Centre, Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art, A Space Gallery, and 16 Beaver. She has an undergraduate degree from the University of Western Ontario and an MFA in Film and Video from York University. Moufawad-Paul has published texts on several artists including Harun Farocki, James Luna, Emily Jacir, Wafaa Bilal, Taysir Batniji, Paul Dennis Miller, Deirdre Logue, Mohammed Mohsen, Jacqueline Hoang Nguyen, Juan Ortiz-Apuy, Basil AlZeri, Erica Lord, John Halak, Rehab Nazzal, Adam Broomberg, Oliver Chanarin, Akram Zaatari, and Yto Barrada.