Reverberations

Performance Art Residency and Living Exhibition
Featuring Jana Omar Elkhatib, Rajyashri Goody, and mihyun maria kim
Curated by Abedar Kamgari

The Commons @ 401 Richmond St West, Toronto
Free events. All are welcome!

Open Studio and Meet-n-Greet
Thursday, 9 October, 4-7pm

Live Performances
Thursday, 30 October, 6:30-9:30pm
Friday, 7 November, 6:30-9:30pm 
*performances will vary each night

Reverberations is a five-week, living residency-exhibition that engages performance art methodologies rooted in unraveling oppressive histories. Artists Jana Omar Elkhatib, Rajyashri Goody, and mihyun maria kim give shape and sound to experiences that transcend generations and continents.

Elkhatib’s performances emerge from the transformative space of fiction writing. She considers the formation of counterhistories and collective imaginaries through the texture and transmission of sounds across borders. Goody’s work celebrates Dalit people’s resistance against centuries of oppression imposed through the caste system, which continues to this day. She reclaims everyday yet charged materials such as water, clothing, paper, and food to envision new possibilities for a casteless society. kim unpacks sensations connected to an accumulation of inherited trauma and fragmented histories through durational or ritualistic actions. Using materials ranging from delicate textiles to slabs of stone, she grapples with the sedimentation of untranslatable grief on the body. Elkhatib, Goody, and kim put their bodies into motion and generate new knowledges about what it means to live in today’s world, carrying the haunting traces of past into future. 

SAVAC brings these artists into a sustained conversation with each other, creating a supportive environment for learning, exchange, and experimentation. Performance is alive and thus always in relation with the people and places where it unfolds. Performance art evenings will allow the artists to stage planned and spontaneous gestures before live audiences, while viewers are invited into a dialogue and critique to support artists in their creative process.

Accessibility:
The building is fully accessible with an elevator. All events are free admission. Refreshments will be served. 

How to find us:
TTC – Closest subway: Osgoode station (Line 1) — about a 10-minute walk. You can also take the 511 Spadina streetcar from Spadina station (Line 2) to Richmond Street West.

By car – We are located at the main intersection of Richmond Street West and Spadina Avenue. Paid parking is available at the back of the building. 

If you are coming from outside of Toronto, you can take a GO transit bus and train to Union Station.

Artist Biographies

Jana Omar Elkhatib is a Palestinian-Canadian artist and writer. Her work across performance, sound, fiction, and research-based interdisciplinary practice has been supported by the Banff Centre, Hamilton Artists Inc, La Corvée Paris, La Centrale Galerie Montreal, 7a*11d Festival Toronto, Ontario Arts Council, and the Canada Council for the Arts, among others. Elkhatib holds an MFA in fiction from Brown. Her practice has been featured in Canadian Art magazine, and her fiction has been published in Brick, SubStance, and nominated for the Pushcart Prize. As an educator, Elkhatib has taught fiction at Brown and art history at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD).

Rajyashri Goody was born in 1990 in Pune, India. She lives and works between the Netherlands and India. Goody completed her BA in Sociology at Fergusson College in Pune in 2011, and an MA in Visual Anthropology at the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology at the University of Manchester, UK in 2013. In 2023, she completed a two year residency at the Rijksakademie Van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam. 

Her research interests include food and water politics, religion, literacy and literature, mobility and place-making in the context of caste-based violence and Dalit resistance in India. Her mediums are primarily paper pulp, clay, text, photography and printmaking.  

Goody’s work has been presented at the Sao Paulo Bienal (2025), Sharjah Biennial (2025), Busan Biennale (2024); National Museum for Women in the Arts, Washington DC (2024); Asia Now, Paris (2023); Jogja Fotografis Festival, Yogyakarta (2023); Recontres de Bamako (2023); Galleryske, New Delhi (2022); Breda Photo (2022); Savvy Contemporary, Berlin (2022); and Goethe Institut, Pune and Mumbai (2025, 2021).

mihyun maria kim is an interdisciplinary artist researching intergenerational affects, hi/stories and translatability. She has had solo exhibitions at Chester Art Centre, Strathcona County Gallery, Red Head, La Figurativa (Spain) and participated in international group shows at Palazzo Ca’Zanardi (Italy), Arte Handelsschule (Germany) and Centre d’Art Marnay Art Centre (France), amongst others. Her site-specific works include Tea Cups for a Cuppa Tea at Gibson House and Remembering Four Sisters at Lakeview Village. Maria was in residence at Fonderie Darling in 2025, the RBC Emerging Artist Network at the Power Plant from 2022 to 2023, La Napoule (France) 2022, and at Can Serrat (Spain) from 2017 to 2018. She holds a BFA in drawing and painting and an MFA in interdisciplinary art from OCADU.

Image: Design made with photograph from mihyun maria kim.

Reverberations is supported by Threading Frequencies, a SSHRC-funded partnership with OCAD University and four other artist-run centres initiated by Immony Mèn and Suzanne Morrissette. SAVAC acknowledges funding support from the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario.