The World is a Garden Whose Walls are the State: Jamelie Hassan and Ron Benner
A Space Main Gallery
November 7 – December 13, 2014
Essay by: Miriam Jordan-Haladyn, Julian Jason Haladyn
Please join A Space Gallery and Fillip 19 for a
PANEL DISCUSSION on FRI DEC 5th, 5-7pm
A Space Gallery is proud to present the first Canadian exhibition to focus on Jamelie Hassan & Ron Benner together. These two artists have lived, worked and organized exhibitions and projects together for over three decades. While their practices are unique and their art may appear to be unconnected, they are actually responding to mutual contexts and points of view that inform the way they live and work. This two person exhibition, The World is a Garden Whose Walls are the State should be approached as a continuation of what began in their 2012 two-person exhibition The World is a Garden at the Biblioteca Andrés Henestrosa in Oaxaca, Mexico. The current title intentionally builds upon its predecessor by adding the remainder of the statement referenced, a fragment of text by the Arabic historian, diplomat and scholar Ibn Khaldun (1332- 1406) – who in 1377 wrote the treatise Al Muqaddimah, which is considered the first philosophy of history. Similarly, the project that began in Oaxaca is here continued, and in many ways extended, through the play of material and historical contexts that the artworks in the current exhibition reference, which is sometimes personal but always political.
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Please join A Space Gallery and Fillip on FRI Dec 5th, 5-7pm as we present a panel discussion and magazine sale. The organization of this event is around the specificity of the exhibition The World is a Garden Whose Walls are the State and thus is focused on Jamelie Hassan and Ron Benner’s artist talks, but also encompasses their work and involvement in artist run culture in the larger trajectory of the development of alternative spaces. Speaking on the panel will be Ron Benner, Jamelie Hassan, Julian Jason Haladyn and Christopher Régimbal with Victoria Lum representing the sale of Fillip 19 in Toronto.
The exhibition is accompanied by a commissioned essay written by Miriam Jordan-Haladyn and Julian Jason Haladyn.
Copies of Fillip 19, featuring Christopher Régimbal’s essay "Institutions of Regionalism: Artist Collectivism in London, Ontario, 1960–1990,” an in-depth exploration of the history of Canadian artist-run culture, will be available for purchase.
http://www.akimbo.ca/akimbos/?id=77067
Biographies
Miriam Jordan-Haladyn is a First Nations writer and artist. She the author of Dialogic Materialism: Bakhtin, Embodiment and Moving Image Art, as well as numerous articles and book chapters. With Julian Haladyn she co-authored The Films and Videos of Jamelie Hassan, a publication that accompanied their curated project of Hassan’s use of moving image works. Currently, Miriam is a SSHRC Postdoctoral fellow in the History of Art and Visual Culture Department at Cornell University.
Julian Jason Haladyn is a Canadian writer and artist. He is the author of Marcel Duchamp: Etant donnes, as well as numerous journal articles and book chapters on art and philosophy. With Miriam he is a founding co-editor of Blue Medium Press
(www.bluempress.ca). Haladyn recently completed a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Toronto and is currently teaching courses at OCAD University and Western University.