AVANT-FEMME / AVANT-GARDE Curated Residency Program at L'Air Arts Atelier 11 Cité Falgière Paris

I attended a residency at  L'Air Arts Atelier 11 Cité Falguière Paris, France in March. The curated group residency Avant-Femme/Avant-Garde focused on women artists past and present in Paris. With a cohort of amazing women artists and writers, the hard-working, lovely team at - Mila Ovchinnikova, Clare Patrick,  Aurora Sevin and Edith Varez lead us on a whirlwind of studio visits, exhibition tours, meetings, gallery hops. 

More images may be seen @as_majerus here and here and here and here and here. 

Built by artists for artists in 1875, Atelier 11 is the last preserved atelier of the historical artists community of Cité Falguière ini Paris. During its 150+ years of artistic history, the Cité Falguière served as a working and living place to more than a hundred French and international artists. Once home to Amedeo Modigliani, Tsuguharu Foujita, Constantin Brancusi, Chaïm Soutine and Paul Gaugin, it was built with connecting staircases and footbridges to foster connections among artists.  More can be read about Atelier 11 here. 

The cohort! 

We laughed, we explored the city, we learned about each other's practices, we focused on the history of women artists in Paris, we grew. 

Jill Anholt, Canada

Clara Carvajal, Spain

Elleke van Gorsel, Netherlands

Patience Haggin, USA

Dianne Hebbert, Nicaragua / USA

Mai-Li Helweg, Germany

Colleen James, USA

Alexandra Majerus, Barbados / Canada

Maral Mohammadi, Iran

Grace Nitoumbi, Ukraine / France

Sonal Patel, India / Australia

Olga Ulmann, Germany 

Katie Stewart, Australia

Rebecca Weisman, USA

With special guest - the L'AiR Arts past resident Barbara Wildenboer (South Africa)

Remapping (Puppy Eyes)

I use the term remapping conceptually as move from space to space - either to live, to visit or for an artist residency - to understand the space I am in and make connections between different sites and what I know and don't know about that site or myself in that site.

My Remapping videos often take the form of a performative video.

A Return to Foul Bay - installation at Gladstone House

A Return to Foul Bay is part of Return, a two-person show exhibition with @delali.cofie curated by @peony_iris as part of @contactphoto.

Return explores ideas of home through photographs by Toronto artists Alexandra Majerus and Delali Cofie. Both artists' work capture the quiet everyday, with moments of joy and reflection. Cofie's images were made in his native Ghana. He describes them as "a love letter and salute to the people and moments that decorate everyday life." Majerus's works document a return home to Barbados to Foul Bay, the last place she visited with her father before his death. She says "the photographs reflect upon not only the loss of a parent but also the loss of a home as I lose my familial connections to the land."

Curated by Lee Petrie.

Feminist Photography Network residency

This group residency was an amazing experience of networking, new friendships, art discussions and production, swimming, laughter, communal meals and island exploring with a cross section of artists from different backgrounds and ages. 

From the Feminist Photography Network website: 

FPN Island is a one-week immersion residency on Toronto Island’s Artscape Gibraltar Point led by the guiding principles of valuing intergenerational and intersectional identities. This experience will advance participants’ practices and develop skills through mentorship, network building, and knowledge sharing.

The 2023 FPN Island artists include: 

Tobi Asmoucha, Barbara Brown, Michele Crockett, Dianne Davis, Hannah Doucet, Amanda Foulds,  Bisma Jay, Bahar Kamali, Soka Lazara, Alexandra Majerus, Lesia Miga,  Allison Morris, Dainesha Nugent-Palache,  Peggy Taylor Reid & Kelsey Whyte

This residency is made possible by support from Canada Council for The Arts and our programming partners BIPOC Photo Mentorship Program and OCAD University. 

 

Artscape Gibraltar Point

The Shape of Memory in Guest Room: Franziska Kunze at Der Greif

 The Shape of Memory was selected for an archive is an archive is an archive. 

Der Greif Guest Room:

Franziska Kunze 
Mar 09, 2023

Guest Room aims to spark collaboration. Franziska Kunze, Chief Curator of Photography and Time-Based Media at the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, has chosen to collaborate with Marta Binazzi, who is Photo Archivist at the Biblioteca Berenson, I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies.

Together, they have developed the following framework for your submissions: An archive is an archive is an archive.

With An archive is an archive is an archive – adopted from Gertrude Stein’s echoing and brilliant quote – Franziska Kunze and Marta Binazzi want to explore the possibilities of archival matters within photography. What do photographs do in archives? What do archives do with photographs? What do you do with both?

https://dergreif.org/guest-room/franziska-kunze-/

I would like to acknowledge funding support from the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario.

HAS Magazine's 5th edition Spaces and Places

I'm honoured that Humanities, Arts and Society placed In This Place in dialogue with Mariau Urrusti's writing About The Construction of The Intangible: Two Mirrors in the fifth edition of their online Journal HAS Magazine.

 

OUTSIDE IN - a two part online conference presented by the University of the Arts London & OCAD University

What does it mean to be invested in the research and practice of landscape as a creative focus today? Whether investigating decolonial frameworks or exploring landscape as a metaphor for aspects of identity, the notion of landscape has become complex, regardless of place or context.

Canada and the UK have profoundly different ways of considering landscape. This two-part online conference event will present landscape in its broadest sense and explore this as an area of possibility and discussion. It will showcase a selection of OCAD University students and alumni alongside University of the Arts London students. Their webpage Outside In

I presented two bodies of work In This Place and A Return to Foul Bay. My presentation begins at 48 minutes. The Q&A begins just after the 2:03 mark.  

Tritiking History

 From the archives

Medallion (date unknown)

 

Remapping (on the Periphery)

Small islands on my mind. As a person who has migrated countries multiple times, the notion of home has become ambiguous, which was further magnified as the pandemic has prevented me from returning to visit my family on the small island where I grew up. While camping in Ontario backcountry, I reflected upon my tangled Canadian identity in this ongoing performative photo and video Remapping series in which I remap conceptually my location - where I am living, visiting or temporarily located for an artist residency - and make connections between where I am and where I have been before.  

Frame made by @mrmeticulousto

Paradise is an island. So is hell.

"It is high time for cartography to take its place among the arts, and for the atlas to be recognized as literature, for it is more than worthy of its original name: theatre orbit terrarum, the theatre of the world."

"Give me an atlas over a guidebook any day. There is no more poetic book in the world."

Schalansky, J. (2010). Paradise is an island. So is hell. In 1349486353 988365266 C. Lo (Trans.), Atlas of Remote Islands: Fifty islands I have never set foot on and never will (p. 23). New York, NY: Penguin Group.