Screens And Thresholds

Scott Benesiinaabandan, Tricia Livingston, Mike MacDonald, Karthik Pandian, Postcommodity, Krista Belle Stewart
Curated by Raymond Boisjoly

Screens and Thresholds considers the impact of mediation on our understanding of history and experience. Diverse works in photography, video, and installation are brought together to examine the anxieties and possibilities in visualizing cultural knowledge—from the limits of scientific objectivity, to the ways knowledge is transferred from one person to another, to the persistence of certain practices in changing circumstances. The exhibition highlights the processes of transformation, not simply their results; in this way, the works may be framed as “medial,” situated somewhere between a beginning and an end.

Screens and Thresholds is generously supported by The Audain Foundation.

Artists

Scott Benesiinaabandan is an Anishinabe intermedia artist living in Montreal who works primarily in photography, printmaking, and video. His work has been included in group exhibitions such as our land, together, Harbourfront Centre, Toronto; Fifth World, Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatchewan; and GHOSTDANCE: Activism, Resistance, Art, Ryerson Image Centre, Toronto. He has had residencies in Australia and Ireland.

Tricia Livingston is an Indigenous artist currently living and working on her home territory in northern British Columbia. She holds a BFA in Photography and Art History from Concordia University, and in 2014 participated in a thematic residency at the Banff Centre. Her work is concerned with ideas of remoteness, displacement, recovery, and revitalization and with the ways these concepts can be used to converse with institutional archives.

Mike MacDonald, of Mi’kmaq ancestry, lived in Vancouver for more than two decades in the 1980s and ’90s. A multimedia artist, he was a video art pioneer whose works were featured in exhibitions worldwide, including at the Canadian Museum of Civilization, Hull, Quebec; the Heard Museum, Phoenix, Arizona; the Walter Philips Gallery, Banff, Alberta; and the Canadian Cultural Centre, Paris, France. In 1994 he was awarded the prestigious Jack and Doris Shadbolt VIVA Prize. Many of his projects took inspiration from traditional Aboriginal medicine and focused on environmental issues. His ethnobotanical research on butterflies resulted in a website, photographs, and numerous butterfly gardens, including one on Presentation House property.

Karthik Pandian works in moving image and sculpture. He has had solo exhibitions at The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Bétonsalon, Paris; Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis; and White Flag Projects, St. Louis, among other venues. His work was featured in the inaugural “Made in L.A.” biennial at the Hammer Museum; La Triennale: Intense Proximity at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris; and the 4th Marrakech Biennale; and in group exhibitions such as Film as Sculpture at Wiels Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels, and Repertory at the Palazzo Cavour, Torino. He lives in Bennington, Vermont.

Postcommodity is an interdisciplinary arts collective based in New Mexico, comprising Raven Chacon, Cristóbal Martínez, and Kade L. Twist. Their work has been shown recently at the 18th Biennale of Sydney; Adelaide International; Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art; Contour, the 5th Biennial of the Moving Image, Mechelen, Belgium; and Nuit Blanche, Toronto. Their land-art installation, Repellent Fence, spans the U.S./Mexico border near Douglas, Arizona, and Agua Prieta, Sonora.

Krista Belle Stewart is a member of the Upper Nicola Band of the Okanagan Nation and currently lives in Vancouver. She has an MFA from Bard College, New York. Stewart has had recent solo exhibitions at the Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver; Kelowna Art Gallery; and Mercer Union, Toronto. An iteration of Indian Artists at Work will be part of a group exhibition, Vancouver Special: Ambivalent Pleasures, opening at the Vancouver Art Gallery in December.

Jordan Wilson is a Vancouver-based emerging curator and writer. He is of mixed European-Indigenous ancestry and is a member of the Musqueam First Nation. He holds an MA in Anthropology and a BA in First Nations Studies, both from the University of British Columbia. He has conducted research at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC, the University of Tromsø in the Sápmi region of arctic Norway, and the Indian Arts Research Center at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico. More recently, he was a co-curator of the community-based exhibit c̓əsnaʔəm, the city before the city, at the UBC Museum of Anthropology. Wilson is currently a Canada Council for the Arts Aboriginal Curator-in-Residence at MOA.

Raymond Boisjoly is an Indigenous artist of Haida descent based in Vancouver. He has presented solo exhibitions and projects in numerous galleries, museums, and artist-run centres in Canada and elsewhere, including solo exhibitions at Catriona Jeffries Gallery, Vancouver; Koffler Centre of the Arts, Toronto; and VOX, Montreal. In 2016, he was presented with a VIVA award by the Shadbolt Foundation. Boisjoly is an Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Studio in the Department of Visual Art + Material Practice at Emily Carr University of Art + Design. He is represented by Catriona Jeffries Gallery.

 

Events

Friday, October 7, 7pm | Introduction with Raymond Boisjoly, Tricia Livingston, and Krista Belle Stewart, followed by opening reception

Thursday, October 13, 8pm | Sound performance by Postcommodity

Sunday, December 4, 2pm | Masking Operations

Join us at the finissage of our exhibition Screens and Thresholds for a conversation with curator/writer Jordan Wilson and curator/artist Raymond Boisjoly. They will discuss  encounters with, and understandings of, contemporary Indigenous cultural practices as framed by institutional circumstances.

Exhibition Brochure
 
Postcommodity, Gallup Motel Butchering, 2011, multi-channel video, 9:05 min, video stills
Postcommodity, Gallup Motel Butchering, 2011, multi-channel video, 9:05 min, video stills
Karthik Pandian, Oversight, 2011, detail
Karthik Pandian, Oversight, 2011. slide projection, rammed earth, mason's line, costume wig, mirror and steel stand. (detail)
Scott Benesiinaabandan, little resistances: marylezin, 2015, digital media
Scott Benesiinaabandan: little resistances: marylezin, 2015, digital media
Mike MacDonald, Butterfly, 1996. C-print. (detail)
Mike MacDonald, Butterfly, 1996. C-print. (detail)
Krista Belle Stewart, Indian Artists at Work, 2016, acrylic paint and vinyl / Leon Polk Smith, Untitled, 1979
Krista Belle Stewart. Indian Artists at Work, 2016, acrylic paint and vinyl / Leon Polk Smith, Untitled, 1979
Karthik Pandian, Oversight ll: Monk's Mound, 2016. Slide projection, rammed earth, mason's line, costume wig, mirror glass and steel stand.
Karthik Pandian, Oversight ll: Monk's Mound, 2016. Slide projection, rammed earth, mason's line, costume wig, mirror glass and steel stand.
Tricia Livingston, What is Good for the Future, What Was Good For the Past, 2016, video, 27 bricks of yeast, milk jug, woven hunting bag, Rubbermaid bin and blankets
Tricia Livingston, What is Good for the Future, What Was Good For the Past, 2016. Video, 27 bricks of yeast, milk jug, woven hunting bag, Rubbermaid bin and blankets.