This exhibition brings together work by Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill and Nicole Kelly Westman along with Toronto-based collective, Faraz Anoushahpour, Parastoo Anoushahpour and Ryan Ferko to look at how histories and economies are inscribed on landscapes, mapping the often hidden power relations held within. Rather than contending with the weight of landscape representation as a nation-building project, each of these works circumvent this logic through intimate and sustained relationship to place. These projects are not about representation, but continued acts of care that stretch through time and across geographies. Each situated in a post-industrial or transitional space, devoid of human habitation or commercial use, these works are punctuated by absence — a hole left by industry, an abandoned mine, a recently resurfaced plot of land — containing traces of what was and fertile for what could be. Through economies of care, investigations into deep history and the creation of speculative futures, these works attempt to answer a question of what could be, re-infusing these absences with the persistence of human presence, unsettling inherited narratives and allowing a polyphonous understanding of our relation to place.
Parastoo Anoushahpour, Faraz Anoushahpour, and Ryan Ferko have worked in collaboration since 2013. Currently based in Toronto, their recent film and installation work has been shown at Projections (New York Film Festival), Wavelengths (Toronto International Film Festival), International Film Festival Rotterdam, Portland International Film Festival, Media City Festival (Windsor/Detroit), Experimenta 2015 (Bangalore), Crossroads Festival (San Francisco), and ZK/U Centre for Art & Urbanistics (Berlin).
Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill is a Cree-Metis artist and writer from Vancouver, B.C., unceded Coast Salish territory. Gabrielle's sculptures and installations examine modes of land use, occupation, and ownership, as well as underground and black market economies. Her work has been exhibited at the TRU Gallery in Kamloops, BC; Gallery Gachet, Grunt Gallery, and Sunset Terrace in Vancouver; and also at Get This! Gallery in Atlanta, GA. Gabrielle's work will be featured in the upcoming exhibition To Refuse/ To Wait/ To Sleep, at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery in Vancouver.
Nicole Kelly Westman is a visual artist of Métis and Icelandic descent. She grew up in a supportive home with strong-willed parents – her mother, a considerate woman with inventive creativity, and her father, an anonymous feminist. Her work culls from these formative years for insight and inspiration. Existing beyond the binary definitive of a specific medium, Nicole Kelly Westman, has had the pleasure and privilege to be curated into exhibitions by remarkable females including; Peta Rake, Kristy Trinier, and cheyanne turions. Westman holds a BFA from Emily Carr University and is the current Director of Stride Gallery.
