Proof is Gallery 44’s annual group exhibition of work by emerging Canadian artists, reflecting a range of current concerns and practices in contemporary photography and lens-based media. Proof is often one of the first exhibitions in a professional context for an emerging artist. Past exhibitions have featured work by Kotama Bouabane, Leila Fatemi, Isabelle Hayeur, Anique Jordan, Laurie Kang, Germaine Koh, Luther Konadu, Meryl McMaster, Elise Rasmussen and Althea Thauberger.
For more information read The Work Comes Back Home, an essay by Fehn Foss.
Mariana Muñoz Gomez is an artist, writer, and curator. Born in Mexico and immigrating to Canada at a young age, they are a settler of colour based in Winnipeg, Manitoba (Treaty 1 Territory), which includes unceded lands of Dene and Dakota Peoples; ancestral territories of Anishinaabe, Ininiwak, and Anishininiwak Peoples; and the homeland of the Métis Nation. Mariana’s lens-based practice involves a variety of media including text works, screen prints, video art, and photography. Their interests include language, identity, diaspora, and displacement, and these topics’ intersections with coloniality, temporality, relation, and place.
Mariana acknowledges the support of Winnipeg Arts Council and Canada Council for the Arts.
Karice Mitchell (b. 1996, Toronto, Canada) is a photo-based installation artist whose practice uses found imagery and digital manipulation to engage with issues relating to the representation of the Black female body in pornography and popular culture. Her work seeks to re-contextualize pre-existing images to reimagine the possibilities for Black womanhood and sexuality detached from the white gaze and patriarchy. She received her BFA at York University in 2019 and her MFA at the University of Waterloo in June 2021. She currently resides on the unceded territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) people where she is a full-time lecturer at the University of British Columbia Vancouver campus.
Lan Florence Yee is a visual artist and serial collaborator based in Tkaronto/Toronto and Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montreal. They collect text in underappreciated places and ferment it until it is too suspicious to ignore. Florence’s work has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art (2021), the Art Gallery of Ontario (2020), the Textile Museum of Canada (2020), and the Gardiner Museum (2019), and many others. Along with Arezu Salamzadeh, they co-founded the Chinatown Biennial in 2020. They obtained a BFA from Concordia University and an MFA from OCAD U.
