Vision
SAVAC’s artistic vision is rooted in method, specifically in the ways that artists of colour make, imagine and present art. We are interested in how these artists create unexpected amalgamations, improbable connections, and other-worldly perspectives through their ways of working, thinking and being. To support artists who defy contemporary linear rules of time and space, SAVAC builds situations that are slow, pleasurable, experimental, and intergenerational – inside and outside of the gallery. We bring attention to and develop projects and artistic practices that are inquisitive, process-oriented, imaginative, and that live beyond inherited colonial boundaries.
Our vision takes form in our exhibitions, discursive programs, film screenings, co-presentations, and pedagogical activities. Our upcoming programming will take on a syncretic feel; thinking around the potentialities of mixed philosophies, methodologies and ecologies, shuffled across the past, present and future. Syncretic working approaches highlight the emotional, cultural and political connections that bring together the places and power structures that we live under.
Through our programming activities, we work with emerging, mid-career or established artists by exhibiting, programming and curating their work, offering mentorship, networking and community building opportunities, and organizing residencies, screenings, and talks. SAVAC is unique in its ability to support a spectrum of artistic mediums, ranging from sculpture to lens-based work, from drawing to performance and media-based practices. In this way, we promote and support artists to find a place within a consortium of art-making, and for them to be able to localize their practice within a variety of artistic fields. By curating the works of both local and international artists, SAVAC holds conversations across borders through the medium of art. We cultivate a variety of intersectional collaborations and partnerships to ensure our work responds to the breath of global conversations that take hold within Toronto’s cultural, ethnic and racial communities.
Considering the breadth and diversity of the artists we work with, SAVAC aims to create space for a plurality of histories and epistemologies. Knowledge sharing and responsiveness to our contemporary realities form our starting point for connecting histories of struggle from around the world. Our vision encourages artistic work that reflect on structural, communal, and everyday issues by critically examining marginalized peoples’ relationship to place, power and time. To that end, SAVAC sees decolonization as a personal, collective, and continuous process, one that leads to the imaginative world-making activities that our artists take on.
