Current Exhibitions
How can I be OK with the e/and of the world?
Jessica Irene Joyce
July 18 – August 1, 2024
Reception: Thursday, July 18 from 5-7PM
artLAB Gallery
EVENT:
Join Jessica Irene Joyce and Ashar Mobeen for an exhibition tour and discussion.
Tuesday, July 30 from 12-1PM
How can I be OK with the e/and of the world? creatively repurposes painting’s formal and material conventions to its own ecological aims. Landscape and portraiture flow around and through each other, urging viewers to look at the world instead of away from it. Scenes from Mount Pleasant Cemetery and Sherwood Fox Arboretum depict transformative cycles of life and death throughout the changing seasons.
In 2019, I began reading Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate (2014) and quit after three chapters, not knowing what to do with the terror and despair it inspired. Inviting these emotions into my painting practice allows me to process anxiety arising from reading about (and living through) climate change. Through this project, I continue to learn and enact the responsibilities urgently demanded by the Climate Emergency, while exploring my relationship to the land colonially known as London, Ontario.
"The end of an imagined future," watercolour and gouache on repurposed birch panel, 9 by 13 inches, 2023.
Body: Material, Performative, Absent
Curated by Soheila Esfahani
Work by Faseeh Saleem
Exhibition: June 27– August 1, 2024
Reception: Thursday, June 27 from 5-7PM
Cohen Commons
In continuation of DRAFTS 5: Diasporic Bodies research and exhibition, Body: Material, Performative, Absent focuses on Faseeh Saleem’s design research on alternative conceptions of the body from a postcolonial lens. Curated by Soheila Esfahani, in this exhibition Saleem explores conceptions of the body and challenges conventional design methods and design thinking in fashion design processes in order to open up for alternative bodies as a methodological foundation. This exhibition suggests a set of concepts that have emerged from workshops and experiments that questioned preconceived notions of the body and facilitated a process of re-learning fashion-design processes. The explorations resulted in tools and methods that augment knowledge of and provide alternatives to standard methods used in fashion-design processes. They are alternative ways of working, constituting knowledge of recursive design methods and facilitating the enhancement of artistic approaches to art and design practices. The body alternatives that emerged from the exploratory experiments provide artistic openness in design thinking and introduce conceptions of the body that can facilitate or improve art and design practice. The results also contribute knowledge regarding design methods in general and how to facilitate learning regarding alternative methodological foundations and what a body could be within art and design education programmes.
Documentation: Dickson Bou, Gallery Preparator
Biographies
Faseeh Saleem is an enthusiastic design thinker; exploring the rigor in artistic design research to develop skills for contributing insightful and alternative conceptions of body in the field of art and design. He has recently completed his doctoral studies from the Swedish School of Textiles, University of Borås, Sweden. He graduated with a BA in Textile Design from Beaconhouse National University (BNU), Lahore, Pakistan in 2007. This further encouraged him to explore his creative potential in both fields of textile and fashion. He later completed his MFA in fashion and textile design with a specialization in textile design at the Swedish School of Textiles, University of Borås, Sweden. His works have been exhibited in reputed Art Galleries and Museums, i.e., at The Textile Museum of Borås - Sweden, 1st International Art Triennial Unpredictable futures UFNA - Lithuania, designtransfer, Berlin University of the Arts, Berlin - Germany, KHOJ Studios, New Delhi – India, Open Design for E-very-thing, Cumulus 2016 – Hongkong, Stockholm furniture fair 2010, Stockholm – Sweden, Alhamra Art Center, Lahore – Pakistan, IVS Gallery, Karachi – Pakistan, Articulate Studios, Lahore – Pakistan and many more.
Soheila Esfahani is a visual artist and Assistant Professor at Western University. Her research and art practice navigates the terrains of cultural translation in order to explore the processes involved in cultural transfer and transformation and questions displacement, dissemination, and reinsertion of culture within diaspora. She is a recipient of grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Region of Waterloo Arts Fund. Her work has recently been exhibited at the Canadian Cultural Centre Paris, Aga Khan Museum, Doris McCarthy Gallery, Cambridge Art Galleries among others and has been collected by various public and private institutions, including the Canada Council’s Art Bank.
