The 7th Register

Now in its 7th year, SAVAC’s annual juried members’ exhibition, The 7th Register is an exciting showcase of the range of contemporary art practices in SAVAC’s membership. This year SAVAC is bringing these works to the MAI (montreal, arts interculturels) to engage with the existing discourse of contemporary diasporic, intercultural art production. Two artists from Ontario – Sarindar Dhaliwal & Atanas Bozdarov, and two from Quebec – Khadija Baker & Mona Sharma, present work that address the complications of a universal Canadian multiculturalism, as well as a monolithic notion of diaspora. The works articulate multiple stories of migration and displacement, allowing for the simplistic idea of the cultural mosaic to be reconfigured into something that must be constantly renegotiated.

Featured Works

Sarindar Dhaliwal
olive, almond & mustard… [film/video projection with audio, 12:45, 2010] olive, almond & mustard… is a 3 channel video, employing archival footage and nursery rhymes to create a sensory experience of hybridity felt by many in the diaspora.

The Cartographer’s Mistake [mixed media installation, 2012]
The sculptures in this work are all “gifts” of colonialism and reference the sports that were introduced by the British to India.

Mona Sharma
What to Do if it Could Happen to You  [mixed media, 2012]
What to Do if it Could Happen to You is a tongue-in-cheek narrative drawing work put together by Sharma as a guide with practical advice for young girls who might find themselves in dangerous situations.

Khadija Baker
Tracing Traces
Tracing Traces is a single-channel video that involves inscribing the names of the casualties of the recent Arab Spring uprising, and Syrian revolution onto ice cubes whilst documenting the melting process, leaving behind delicate remnants.

In the Presence of Absence [performance, 20:00]
Baker presents a participatory durational performance presented on the opening night of the exhibition – April 6, 2013.

Atanas Bozdarov
To Be  [mixed media, 2013]
Using the works from the series To Be, which examines section 2(b) in the “Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms”, Bozdarov creates a series of public installations and interventions throughout Montreal. The works are intended to serve as an educational tool and a reminder of these rights and freedoms, and also offer the viewer ways of becoming active participants.

Sarindar Dhaliwal is a visual artist based in Toronto. Her practice is rooted in both painting/drawing and large mixed media installations. Dhaliwal has exhibited widely in Canada since the 1980s. Her most recent solo shows were at Galerie Deste in Montreal (2010) and the Robert Langen Art Gallery in Waterloo (2012).

Atanas Bozdarov is an interdisciplinary artist and designer whose work deconstructs the ways in which we read and interpret structure(s) in order to question our understanding of the working systems around us. He has exhibited at the Athens Institute for Contemporary Art, AGYU (Art Gallery of York University, Toronto), Blackwood Gallery (Mississauga) and XPACE (Toronto).

Khadija Baker is a multidisciplinary artist who creates installations that combine video, textile and sound. Her work explores social and political themes related to persecution, displacement and memory. Her work has been exhibited in Montreal, Toronto, New York, London, Berlin, Marseille, Beirut, Damascus and the 2012 Sydney Biennale.

Mona Sharma is a Montreal-based artist who works primarily in soft sculpture and graphic drawing. Her works evoke narratives that reveal, mislead and build towards the viewers’ realization of their role in shaping, supporting or suppressing those around them.