Contact Landing(s)
Curated by Ellyn Walker
July 20 – September 16, 2018
Artists: Faraz Anoushahpour-Parastoo Anoushahpour-Ryan Ferko, Christina Battle, Sandra Brewster, Teresa Carlesimo & Michael Derisio, Vanessa Dion Fletcher, Zoe Hëyn-Jones, Felix Kalmenson, Morris Lum, Dylan Miner, Jalani Morgan, Abdi Osman, Skawennati
Inspired by contemporary land disputes that have taken place in and around the locality of Chatham-Kent, the exhibition curated by Ellyn Walker, considers the range of relations to place that can exist in any given region. While land disputes prompt us to reflect on the history of uneven land transactions in this country, they also bring to mind varied stories of arrival to this place and ways of community-building once here.
Largely known as an agricultural township near the Canada/US border and the location of the Battle of the Thames, Chatham-Kent represents a space of multi-sited histories. Artworks by Vanessa Dion Fletcher, Jalani Morgan, Zoe Hëyn-Jones, Teresa Carlesimo and Michael DiRisio remind us of this, engaging with lesser known stories of this place through an exploration of site-specific Indigenous, Black and cross-cultural histories.
Artists in the exhibition also explore other near and far-away places as complex sites of belonging, place-making and community-building. Artists Sandra Brewster, Abdi Osman and Morris Lum turn their attention towards Toronto as a similar place of multiplicity in their image-based works; while the collective comprised of Ryan Ferko-Faraz Anoushahpour-Parastoo Anoushahpour focus on the region of Cornwall.
The exhibition more broadly examines contested relationships to and of place, exploring ways in which cultures have moved across land, communities have settled in place, environments have been exploited, and individuals have resisted. While Christina Battle and Felix Kalmenson’s works show us some of the extremities that human contact has caused the earth so far, Skawennati and Dylan Miner’s works propose new ways for living based on ancient Indigenous teachings and more recent activisms. Accordingly, the artworks in the exhibition help us to think through and move towards imagining how we might begin to grow more just and compelling futures together in spite of living in places of prior and continued contestation.
