Vitrine Exhibition "Crisis of Narrative"

"CRISIS OF NARRATIVE" Vitrine Exhibit, Concordia Department of Art History
Adrian Gorea · Aditi Ohri · Stephanie Raudsepp · Solafa Rawas · Alisi Telengut
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"To raise the question of the nature of narrative is to invite reflection on the very nature of culture and possibly, even on the nature of humanity itself. So natural is the impulse to narrate, so inevitable is the form of narrative for any report on the way things really happened, that narrativity could appear problematical only in a culture in which it was absent..."
Hayden White, The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1987) 1.

Crisis of Narrative presents artwork by five Concordia students: Adrian Gorea, Aditi Ohri, Stephanie Raudsepp, Solafa Rawas, and Alisi Telengut. Through their practice, these artists examine the role of storytelling in the representation and definition of reality. More specifically, this exhibition explores the crisis of narrative generated by exclusionary institutional discourses within the field of Canadian visual arts, negotiating the transmission of knowledge, issues of place, identity, gender and history.

The vitrine will be up from March 15th to April 15th 2013 in the Art History Department vitrine on the 3rd floor of the EV building.

This exhibition seeks to investigate the role of narrative in the representation and definition of reality. More specifically, it explores the function of narrative in the transmission of knowledge and its negotiation of issues of place, identity, gender, history, hegemony, and representation within the visual arts. Narrative represents systematic ways for articulating knowledge. "Even when we look at something as static and as completely spatial as a picture," author H. Porter Abbott writes, "narrative consciousness comes into play." As taxonomical, static definitions, grand narratives perpetuate the dichotomies that inform power hierarchies, thus producing an oppressive relationship between dogmatic narratives and the realities of cultural pluralism. The works in this exhibition respond to this crisis of narrative wrought by exclusory institutional discourses upon which many of our contemporary social and cultural systems are founded.

Narrative seen in this way moves towards encompassing the heterogeneity of knowledge. The varied works and strategies deployed by the five Concordia students presented here, feature diverse voices that critique narrative as a "discursive reproduction of power, abuse and social inequality."" Rather, they express negotiations of the struggle to articulate cultural identities.

H. Porter Abbott, The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 6.
Teun A van Dijk, Discourse and Power (New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2008), 1.

EAHR Curators: Carolina Garcia Amatos Cécile Charvel • Samantha Wexler . Rajee Jejishergill • Adrienne Johnson
Katerina Korola Sara Catherine de Montigny Racher. Genevieve Wallen Brittany Watson

This exhibition was made possible with the support of The Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art, the Fine Arts Student Alliance (FASA), the Concordia Council for Student Life (CCSI) and the Department of Art History at Concordia University.