South-South: Interruptions and Encounters

Winner of the Curatorial Writing Award/Prix des textes de conservation at the 2010 OAAG Awards.

Omar Badsha
Allan deSouza
Brendan Fernandes
Marlon Griffith
Jamelie Hassan
Apache Indian
Louise Liliefeldt
Hew Locke

In partnership with the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery
Curated by Tejpal S. Ajji and Jon Soske

Opening reception: 2 April 2009, 6–8pm. JMB Gallery.
Exhibition catalogue launch: 11 May 2009, 7:30-9pm. JMB Gallery.

South-South: Interruptions and Encounters stages an unprecedented intervention by bringing together eight artists whose work is situated at an intersection of African and South Asian history, politics, or culture. These encounters occur in a variety of forms and locations: Trinidad’s Carnival, a South African ghetto, the music of Black Britain, a family’s history of migration from East Africa, the colonial monuments of a historic slave port, and the actual speaking voice of an artist. Concerned with a common set of questions about identity and history, each artist also addresses these Southern intersections formally, either by transfiguring the parameters of a particular medium (photography, sculpture, video, installation, or performance) or through interrupting normative representations of “India” and “Africa.”

• Catalogue available from the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery. $15 CAD
  Essays By: Tejpal S. Ajji and Jon Soske, Christopher Cozier, Sarah Nuttall, Annie Paul, Sukhdev Sandhu, Mark Sealy, and Leon Wainwright with a foreword by Barbara Fischer and Haema Sivanesan.
  Editors: Tejpal S. Ajji and Jon Soske
  ISBN: 978-0-7727-6068-5
  Publication Year: 2009

Performing Foe: Workshop with Brendan Fernandes
28-29 March 28, 1-5pm
Debates Room, Hart House

This two-part, week-end long, interactive session aims to create dialogue through readings, film screenings and discussions. The material will explore notions of identity through the assumptions and constructions of culture exhibited in the performative aspects of language and accent. The workshop will then conclude with a performance piece engaging with all participants—organized in the form of a vocal choir. For the performance, Fernandes will elaborate on his 2008 video, Foe in which he worked with a dialect coach to teach him to speak generalized Indian, Kenyan and Canadian ‘English-cultural accents’. In the workshop, Fernandes will teach and record the script of his video to his audience in a choir-like fashion, allowing them to adopt these cultural accents. Ultimately, the work intends to question the authenticity of self.

Before and After Bandung: Conversations Between African and Indian Nationalisms
2 April, 4-6pm
Croft Chapter House, University College

Panelists: Vijay Prashad, (Trinity College, Hartford), Michelle Stephens (Colgate University, Hamilton, NY), Paul Zeleza (University of Illinois, Chicago)

View webcast »

South-South: Interruptions and Encounters Panel Discussion
6 April, 6:30-8:30pm
Music Room, Hart House, University of Toronto

This panel discussion brings together artists and writers to further explore the notion of the “aesthetics of the encounter” as represented in the exhibition.
Panelists: Omar Badsha (artist), Elizabeth Harney (University of Toronto, Department of Art), Tejpal S. Ajji (curator)

Moderator: Haema Sivanesan (SAVAC Executive Director)

• Tejpal S. Ajji speaks to Wojtek Gwiazda on Masala Canada, Radio Canada International. Aired 28 March 2009  <tej-south-south-rci.mp3, 8.7mb>
• Canadian Art online <http://www.canadianart.ca/online/see-it/2009/04/16/south-south/>
  
• David Balzer, “South-South and Brendan Fernandes,” Eye Weekly, 29 April 2009.  <http://www.eyeweekly.com/galleries/article/58957>
• Derek Brunelle, “Barnicke Gallery Looks South: Hart House exhibition South-South: Interruptions and Encounters highlights post-colonial art,” The Varsity, 9 April 2009. <http://thevarsity.ca/articles/19034>
• Gabrielle Moser, “South-South: Interruptions and Encounters at Justina M Barnicke Gallery,” Gabrielle Moser Projects and Things. 2 April 2009. <http://gabriellemoser.com/ 2009/04/02/south-south-interruptions-and-encounters-at-justina-m-barnicke-gallery/>