cause to become

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Florence Yee, "PROOF—Chinatown Anti-Displacement Garden," 2020

hand-embroidered thread on cotton voile print. Photo: courtesy of the artist.

cause to become

Whess Harman, Mariana Muñoz Gomez, Florence Yee, and Hagere Selam (shimby) Zegeye-Gebrehiwot

Curated by Christina Hajjar

April 1 to May 14, 2021

To be living in a diaspora, away from the lands of our lineage, creates a generative longing that is stubbornly, rightfully unquenchable. Instead of characterizing longing through the void, cause to become engages memory, imagination, and rumination as processes that generate alternative life paths, self-determined and with creative defiance. Through criticality and sentimentality, the aesthetic practices of queer diaspora “disorient and reorient us”—as scholar Gayatri Gopinath puts it—representing liminality and states of suspension as active, productive, disruptive sites.

To “cause to become” is to render. For many queer people of colour, living in a hostile world necessitates art-making as a validating method of identity exploration, intimacy, and world-building. This group exhibition brings together works in various media ranging from Super 8 film and CMYK screen printing to typography, poetry, and embroidery. Artists Whess Harman, Mariana Muñoz Gomez, Florence Yee, and Hagere Selam (shimby) Zegeye-Gebrehiwot demonstrate the value in remembering, imagining, or anticipating home or place, and constructing alternative modes of becoming. 

Adjunct Programming:

Unruly Visions: The Aesthetic Practices of Queer Diaspora: A Lecture by Dr. Gayatri GopinathThursday, April 15, 7:00 to 8:30 p.m. CDTFacilitated on Zoom and live-streaming on the School of Art Gallery, University of Manitoba YouTube channel.Live captions and ASL available. Event will be recorded and uploaded to YouTube.

mapping elsewhere: A Reading by Mariana Muñoz GomezThursday, May 6, 7:00 to 8:30 p.m. CDTFacilitated on Zoom and live-streaming on the School of Art Gallery, University of Manitoba YouTube channel.The panel will be ASL interpreted and recorded, and uploaded to YouTube.