Presence

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Joyce Salloum, “swimming through, the cosmos, light the darkness, what do the fish know 'cause we don't, koi, Sylix territory (Kasungai Gardens, aka Kelowna, BC), 7/7/21 [20210727_113145],” 2021

(courtesy of the Gallery)

Artists: Ghazaleh Avarzamani, Tamara Lee-Anne Cardinal, Jayce Salloum, Christine Howard Sandoval, Abbas Akhavan, Badlands Art Residency x Lindsay Sutton, Linda Sormin

Presence is an exhibition about the ways we occupy and organize space, and the role it plays in shaping our sense of community. What makes a space hospitable for some more than others, and how do we find our place within space?

Drawing on the understanding of space as a socio-temporal construct, artists are invited to reflect on space as it is continually produced, contested and transformed. The exhibition is rooted in ideas of placemaking that centers community and networks of collective enterprise as cultural infrastructures in themselves, and is a gathering of projects and artworks that contemplates the evolving definitions of community and collectivity. 

Presence is a window into a larger ecosystem of practices that emphasizes and empowers the ordinary or commonplace. It reflects the ways we are present in the spaces we inhabit. While focusing on lived and embodied experiences, storytelling and popular practices, the artists invite us to journey with them, to trace, explore and expand the ways we think of communities.