Bento Leite, Dyó Potyguara, Simon(e) Pateau | The Hungry Mist (A Névoa Faminta)
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Oxygen Art Centre 3-320 Vernon St, Enter from Alley, Nelson, British Columbia V1L 4B7
Simon(e) Jaikiriuma Paetau and Carlos Motta, “Mourning Stage,”2022
experimental video short film still (courtesy of the gallery)
Oxygen Art Centre is delighted to present the group exhibition, The Hungry Mist (A Névoa Faminta) guest curated by Rodrigo D’Alcântara (Brazil/Canada) featuring international artists Bento Leite (Brazil), Dyó Potyguara (Brazil), and Simon(e) Jakiriuma Pateau (Germany/Colombia).
Guest curator Rodrigo D’Alcântara conceived of the exhibition as a response to the global pandemic alongside the very state of collapse and acute uncertainties of life caused by the current neo-colonial system. D’Alcântara’s curatorial practice focuses on Brazilian contemporary art and Latin American futurisms and continues this research as a doctoral candidate at Concordia University (Montréal, Canada).
The Hungry Mist (A Névoa Faminta) as a concept and exhibition title draws on spiritual implications of the pandemic. It directly alludes to an Indigenous Brazilian Guarani-Nhadeva cosmology that foresaw an invisible smoke arriving to take people’s lives. At once concerning the material and ephemeral, The Hungry Mist (A Névoa Faminta) looks to repetitions of systemic colonial violence on bodies, the land, and our communities to contend with the present towards alternative futurities.
Prior to the exhibition, Oxygen Art Centre will host the curator and artists on the tum xula7xw of the sn̓ʕay̓ckstx, otherwise known as Nelson, B.C., for a three-week residency program from November 13, 2023, to November 30, 2023. The residency creates space for the group to engage with exhibition thematic and to work collaboratively on new process-based pieces that will be presented alongside existing multimedia and two-dimensional artworks in the exhibition.
The public will be invited to a series of adjunct programming and events to meet with the artists and learn more about their practices.
With this premise, curator Rodrigo D’Alcântara (Brazil/Canada) and international artists Bento Leite (Brazil), Dyó Potyguara (Brazil), and Simon(e) Jakiriuma Pateau (Germany/Colombia) will be immersed at the Oxygen Art Centre from 13 to 30 November 2023 producing works related to the tensions between spiritual, urban, natural, and territorial spheres in Nelson, BC.