An apology, a pill, a ritual, a resistance

×

Expand

Kapwani Kiwanga, "The Marias," 2020

paper flowers, Installation view, at the formerly named Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, 2020 Photo: Kristien Daem

An apology, a pill, a ritual, a resistance clusters together works exploring or enacting methods of healing and the pain that often must be endured to get better. Specific subjects range from Indigenous responses to smallpox and the 1918 influenza pandemic, to iconic works by artists grappling with the HIV/AIDS crisis, and apologies and acts of reconciliation that move toward healing relations fractured by colonialism. 

The artists featured in the exhibition attend to the sick or disabled body as it intersects with societal injustices, and propose alternate frameworks for care and wellbeing rooted in relation to community and the non-human world. Within philosophy, the term pharmakon is a composite of three meanings: remedy, poison and scapegoat. The indeterminacy of medicine to simultaneously heal and harm, and its capacity to produce altered bodies and states of consciousness, is addressed throughout the exhibition. As anxieties of contagion remain hyper-visible, attached to bodies as much as to viruses, the concept of pharmakon becomes a useful lens through which to consider our current moment. What rituals do we enact, whether daily or ceremonial, for our wellbeing, and what must be expelled—or conversely, taken in—in order to heal?

Featured artists include Ruth Cuthand, Wally Dion, Guo Fengyi, Sharona Franklin, General Idea, Jeffrey Gibson, Carsten Höller, Clara Hume, Brian Jungen, Kapwani Kiwanga, Kite, Carolyn Lazard, Candice Lin, Les Levine, Paul Maheke, Dylan Miner, Jane Ash Poitras, Skeena Reece, Allen Sapp, P. Staff, Adrian Stimson, Alberta Whittle and Linda Young.

The exhibition takes place in both the Connect Gallery on the ground floor and the Marquee Gallery on Level 3. A screening of work by Alberta Whittle will take place in the SaskTel Theatre on all Saturdays and Sundays during the exhibition's run.

Please see the website for dates of related events.