(pre)existing conditions

10/14/2020

EAHR’s Instagram Exhibition titled HEAR US NOW! Is coming to a close, after exhibiting 20 wonderful artists. Dr. Alice Ming Wai Jim, EAHR Faculty Advisor and member of the Artistic Committee for ISEA 2020 (Intersociety of Electronic Arts) has invited EAHR to curate a selection of new media artworks from the summer Instagram project that resonate with ISEA’s theme this year, which is “Why Sentience.” ISEA is a major international symposium and festival on technology and new media art that is taking place as a hybrid event online and in Montreal this week October 13th through 18th!

The selection of 7 of these artists are being represented under ISEA2020’s collaborative projects: (pre)existing conditions. Find the selected work on the Instagram hashtag: #EAHR_ISEA2020

EAHR Instagram: @eahrconcordia

Please find below a link to the ISEA website.
The EAHR project is listed under collaborations.
https://art2020.isea-international.org/

#EAHR_ISEA2020

ISEA 2020 Website

ARTISTS: Astria Suparak, born in the USA, and lives in Oakland, CA, Jean-Pierre Mot, born in Canada, lives in Brooklyn, NY, Jaret Vadera, born in Canada, lives in Brooklyn, NY, Jayce Salloum, born in Canada lives in Vancouver, B.C., Jenny Lin, born in Canada, lives in Tiohtià:ke / Montreal, kimura byol-nathalie lemoine, lived in South Korea/Belgium, lives in Tiohtia:ke/Montreal, Rodrigo D'Alcântara (b. Rodrigo de Alcântara Barros Bueno) born in Brazil, lives in Brasília, Distrito Federal.

During this time of heightened crisis and increased precarity due to COVID-19, the disproportionate impact on racial and ethnic minorities, including Indigenous communities, Black communities, and communities of colour (IBPOC), is irrefutable. The coronavirus pandemic has clearly made existing racial and social inequities worse, shoring up the longstanding diversity problem and lack of adequate race-based data in medicine and the health care system. The police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade and others - and the ensuing ongoing Black Lives Matter protests condemning anti-Black racism and systemic police brutality, further exposed deep global racial disparities across societies.

From increased state-sanctioned anti-Asian racism and hate crimes, with leaders and their media sycophants calling COVID-19 the “China virus,” to white supremacist attacks and military crackdowns on Black protestors against police violence and racial injustice, the twinned pandemics of COVID and racism have underscored the urgency of effecting change, of taking action even when and precisely because the crisis is still unfolding, as wild fires incinerate the planet, and because it took a million people watching a man die over eight minutes on television - a person, another human being, deprived of the right to live, the right to breathe, their very sentience downplayed until the last glimmer of life left his body -- to spark this new intercultural activism. There is no doubt that this moment which we find our world in, asks exactly the question, why sentience? And, why and how does it matter?

(pre)existing conditions (#earh_isea2020) is a selection of seven projects closely resonating with the ISEA2020 theme of “Why Sentience?” that are part of EAHR’s larger HEAR US NOW! Instagram Project (@eahrconcordia) whose goal was to connect with and support the work of BIPOC artists during this time of uncertainty in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Over the course of ten weeks June 29 through September, HEAR US NOW! posted weekly submissions of artistic responses to the circumstances presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, including the urgent call to address ongoing systemic racism and oppression, (pre-)existing conditions, climate change, and social justice activism. With the lockdown, artists did not have physical venues to exhibit their work making the Internet the obvious recourse. During the practice of physical distancing measures, social media also functioned as an important site for sharing videos, news, and information about anti-racist movements. Instagram was chosen because it best conveyed the variances of responses over a ten-week period curated during COVID-19. The archive of all twenty Instagram posts can be found at www.ethnoculturalarts.com.

Ethnocultural Art Histories Research (EAHR) is a student-driven research community focused on examining issues of cultural representation and ethnocultural art histories research across various disciplines. Since 2011, EAHR has facilitated opportunities for exchange and creation through its programming in order to critically engage within the visual arts in Canada. EAHR distinguishes itself through its membership which comprises mainly undergraduates, graduates and alumni of Concordia University. EAHR is supported by the Concordia University Research Chair in Ethnocultural Art Histories and based in the Department of Art History at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. The EAHR Instagram project is grateful for additional support from the Thinking Through the Museum (TTTM) Research Network.

HEAR US NOW! BIPOC Instagram Project @eahrconcordia, June 29 through September 2020
Curated by Diane Wong, Tamara Harkness, Chaeyeon Park, and Sarah Piché.
(pre)existing conditions: #eahr_isea2020, October 13 through 19, 2020
Curated by Tamara Harkness and Sarah Piché, with Alice Ming Wai Jim.

Astria Suparak

Astria Suparak, The Urban Legend of Rat Eating (excerpt of Asian futures, without Asians), digital slides, 2020

Astria Suparak is an artist and curator based in Oakland, California. Suparak’s creative and collaborative projects, often taking the form of publicly accessible tools, maps, and databases of subcultures and misunderstood histories, have been exhibited and performed at Artists Space (New York), ICA London, SFMOMA, Tensta Konsthall (Stockholm), Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, and The Warhol Museum, and published in LTTR and Graffiti Women: Street Art from Five Continents. Her writing has appeared in The Getty blog, Art21 Magazine, VICE Magazine’s Noisey, Boing Boing, The Exhibitionist, The Museum Is Not Enough, and Queer Threads: Crafting Identity and Community. She co-edited and co-produced the Sports issue of INCITE Journal of Experimental Media, The Yes Men Activity Book, and New Art/Science Affinities. She has curated exhibitions, screenings, performances, and live music events for art institutions and festivals across ten countries, including The Liverpool Biennial, Museo Rufino Tamayo, MoMA PS1, La Cinémathèque québécoise, Eyebeam, The Kitchen, and Expo Chicago, as well as for unconventional spaces such as roller-skating rinks, ferry boats, sports bars, and rock clubs. Her curatorial practice has explored science, political and community activism, and feminisms and gender, among other topics.

j.p.mot

j.p.mot, When did you know that you wanted to be an artist? From the series Annotated Photography, Digital, 2020

j.p.mot is a Khmer-Canadian conceptual artist born in Montreal currently living between Brooklyn and Montreal. He holds an MFA in Visual Art (2015) from Columbia University, New York, and a BFA in Visual and New Media Art (2009) and MA in International Development (2012) from L'Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). He has participated in exhibitions and performance art festivals nationally and internationally, including the Raflost Electronic Art Festival, Reykjavik, Iceland; Viva Art Action, Montreal; Red Gate Gallery, Beijing; and Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), Singapore. Artist residencies include Gamli Scóli in Hrísey, Iceland; SOMA, Mexico City; Tropical Lab, Singapore; NARS Foundation, Brooklyn; MASS MoCA, North Adams; and Wassaic Project, New York. j.p.mot has received numerous grants from Canada Council for the Arts and Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec as well as a fellowship from the New York Art Residency and Studios (NARS) Foundation. (2018).

Jaret Vadera

Jaret Vadera, No Country, 2014, from the Pangea series, black marker on world map, 30" x 20".

Jaret Vadera is a multidisciplinary artist who lives and works between Canada, the US, and India and is currently based in Brooklyn, New York. He holds an MFA in Painting and Printmaking from Yale University. Vadera uses collage, photography, video, sculpture, and installation as a means to examine the ways that power, technology, and ideology intersect in images. His practice is influenced by science fiction, Rorschach tests, and impossible objects. Vadera's work has been exhibited and screened at the Queens Museum, Museum of Modern Art, Asia Society Museum, and Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in New York; Bhau Daji Lad Museum in Mumbai; Maraya Art Centre in Sharjah; and the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto. In parallel, Vadera has worked as a curator, programmer, and writer on projects that focus on art as a catalyst for cultural change. Vadera completed his undergraduate education at the Ontario College of Art and Design University in Toronto and the Cooper Union School of Art in New York.

Jayce Salloum

Jayce Salloum, beyond now/this time, instagram, 2020.

Jayce Salloum tends to go only where he is invited or where there is an intrinsic affinity, his projects being rooted in an intimate engagement with place(s), and the people that inhabit them. The grandson of Syrian immigrants from the Beqaa Valley (Lebanon), Salloum was born and raised on Sylix (Okanagan) territory in Kelowna, BC. After living and working in Canada, the United States, and Lebanon, he has been based on the unceded Xwmetskwíyem/xʷməθkʷey̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh/sqʷx̌ʷoʔməx (Squamish) + Selíl̓witulh/səíl̓wətaʔł (Tsleil-Waututh) territories of ‘Vancouver’ for the past 23 years. He has worked in various mediums including installation, photography,and performance, as well as curating exhibitions and coordinating a vast array of cultural projects. Salloum has exhibited at the widest range of local and international venues, from the smallest unnamed storefronts & community centres in his Vancouver neighbourhood to institutions such as the Musée du Louvre, Paris; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Canada; Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin; as well as a multitude of international Biennials and film festivals. His texts/works have been featured in publications such as; Third Text, Semiotext(e), and The Archive (Whitechapel/MIT Press), to name only a few. In 2014 Salloum received the Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts.

Jenny lin

Jenny Lin is a Taiwanese-Canadian visual artist based in Tiohtiá:ke / Mooniyang / Montréal, who works with experimental narrative, primarily in the form of print-based installations, artists’ books and zines. She is drawn to the socio-political, accessible and community-based aspects of print and zine-making, self-publishing and distribution, and uses drawing and text as a way to process life experiences and connect with the world around her. Some of her zine projects have included web, video and AR components, feeding into an interest in moving and transforming images, interactivity and wide-reaching platforms. She works together with Eloisa Aquino as B&D Press, a queer micropress project. Together, they have created collaborative zines as well as print-based installations, and facilitate zine-making workshops with a focus on queer, feminist content and QTBIPOC communities.

kimura byol-nathalie lemoine

kimura byol-nathalie lemoine, “Signing Distance”, GIF, 2020.

kimura byol-nathalie lemoine (키무라 별 – 나타리 르뫈 – 木村ビヨル – ナタリーレムワンー) is a conceptual multimedia feminist artist who works on identities (diaspora, ethnicity, colorism, post-colonialism, immigration, gender), and expresses it with calligraphy, paintings, digital images, poems, videos and collaborations. kimura*lemoine’s work has been exhibited, screened, published, and supported nationally and internationally. As a curator, kimura*lemoine has developed projects that give voice and visibility to minorities. As an activist archivist, ze is working on A.C.A (adoptees cultural archives) to document the history of adoptee’s culture through media and arts.

Recipient of the Mentorship Program from Montreal Arts Interculturals (2014–15) and a Vivacité Grant from CALQ (2015) and the Powerhouse Prize from Gallery La Centrale, kimura*lemoine has also received grants from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec. In 2020, kimura*lemoine completed Adoption 30 years after (with ACIC-ONF/NFB) and exhibited at Dazibao (January–March 2020, Montreal).

Rodrigo d'alcântara

Rodrigo D'Alcântara, Matriarchal Ensigns, from the Self-declarations series, Digital Collage, 2020.

Rodrigo D’Alcântara (Rodrigo de Alcântara Barros Bueno - b. Niterói, Brazil) is a visual artist, film/video-maker and PhD student in the Interuniversity Doctoral Program in Art History at Concordia University (Montreal, CA). His doctoral studies are supported by Concordia University Graduate Fellowship and Concordia International Tuition Award of Excellence. He holds a Master degree in Visual Arts from the School of Fine Arts of Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) and a Bachelor degree in Plastic Arts from the Univer- sity of Brasília (Brazil) - with an exchange term in the Los Andes University (Colombia). Rodrigo’s works have been screened internationally, in countries such as Austria, Brazil, Belgium, Chile, Germany, Greece, and Italy, among others. His theoretical research focuses on analyzing some of the concepts and imagery that have been perpetuated through Western Art History and have contributed in maintaining a colonial and straight structure in contemporary times. He is interested in recent contemporary art movements and theories that have been created through the subversion of hegemonic historicity.

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