Technological Revolutions

TECHNOLOGICAL REVOLUTIONS @ Hamilton Artists Inc.

October 22 – November 20, 1999
Opening: Friday October 22 @ 8:00pm

103 Vine Street, Hamilton, ON 905 529 3355
Hours: Tuesday to Friday from noon to 5pm, Saturday noon to 4pm

Alia Hasan Khan
Swati Khurana
Shefali Mehta
Leith Gill Murgai
Prema Murthy

Curated by Neena Arora

This project explores the process of art making for artists of colour at the end of the 20th Century. Specifically questioning positioning of South Asian artists producing issue-based works, and those incorporating or referencing new technologies in their art making process.

As artists who maintain a historical link to South Asia, but who are now settled elsewhere, this embrace of technology is seen as a seductive yet potentially dangerous relationship. As artists living and working in Canada and the United States, we have had a different relationship to technology, and have seen its positive and negative effects on Western society. We have had envied access to technology, and many South Asian-Canadian artists are also working in time-based media and new media.

Here the artists explored issues of technological Imperialism and the historical inequalities in the access to technology. Questioning ideas around current nuclear war tensions in Asia, from the viewpoint of Diasporic South Asians settled in the ‘West’; and the changing role of the artist from craftsperson to technological producer; and/or the politics of art making in a world seduced by technological speed, advancement and change.

SAVAC developed this exhibition in collaboration with Hamilton Artists Inc., and the curator . We will also be a part of a publication in conjunction with the Perpetual Crisis Series at Hamilton Artist Inc. This project includes a live web performance on opening night, by Prema Murthy from new York City and transmitted via webnet to the gallery space in Hamilton, Ontario.