We Look at Animals Because

25 January – 25 March, 2018
Critical Distance: Centre for Curators 180 Shaw Street (Suite 302), Artscape Youngplace

In partnership with Critical Distance, SAVAC is pleased to present We Look At Animals Because, an exhibition that gazes on animality. Through the lens of spectatorship, the show explores the shifting ways in which animals are regarded, represented and accorded meaning in post-industrial landscapes. Exhibiting photographs, video, works on paper, and sculpture, the featured artists reveal the nuanced, complicated and unexpected paradoxes that mark our relationships with cosmopolitan animals.

A series of public learning events will be announced in early 2018 to complement the exhibition.

Nahed Mansour is a Toronto-based curator and multidisciplinary artist working primarily in video, installation, and performance, She is currently the Constituent Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto Canada. Previously she held the position of Artistic Director at SAVAC, as well as Director of Mayworks Festival of Working People and the Arts, Toronto.

Toleen Touq is a curator and writer who has recently moved to Toronto from Amman, Jordan.
She is co-founder of annual residency Spring Sessions, a program that brings together artists, scholars and cultural practitioners in a collaborative and experiential learning environment for 100 days each spring. She also initiated The River Has Two Banks, a multidisciplinary platform that addresses the historical, political and mobility commonalities between Jordan and Palestine. Her writings have been published with Ibraaz, A Prior, Manifesta Journal, and others.

Quratulain Butt was born in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, and trained as a miniature painter and sculptor at the National College of the Arts in Lahore, and the Hunerkada Academy of Visual and Performing Arts Islamabad. She is now based in Canada.

Khaled Hourani is based in Ramallah, Palestine, and has exhibited widely including a retrospective at the CCA in Glasgow and Gallery One in Ramallah, dOCUMENTA (13), and the 2011 Sharjah Biennial. He is a co-founder of the International Academy of Art in Palestine and recently received the Leonore Annenberg Prize by Creative Time for Art and Social Change, New York.

Maha Maamoun is a Cairo-based Egyptian artist. Her work has been shown in biennials and exhibitions at such venues as Sharjah Art Foundation, the New Museum (NY), Tate Modern; and Museum of Modern Art, NY (MoMA). She is a founding board member of the Contemporary Image Collective (CiC), an independent non-profit space for art and culture founded in Cairo, and a co-founder of the independent publishing platform Kayfa-ta.

Smriti Mehra is based in Bangalore, India and works primarily in video, through which she interacts with local residents from multilingual, cultural, economic backgrounds. She holds an MFA from NSCAD University (Halifax) and her works have been screened worldwide.

Huma Mulji holds an MFA from Transart Institute, Berlin, and a BFA from the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture, Karachi. She has exhibited widely including at the Karachi, Venice and Gwangju Biennials, Whitechapel Gallery (London), and Asia Society (NY). She is currently a Lecturer in Fine Art, at Plymouth College of Art, UK.

Ed Panar is is based in Pittsburgh (PA) and holds an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art (MI). His photographs and books have been exhibited internationally at venues including The Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; Nofound Photofair, Paris; The New York Photography Festival, and the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Alex Sheriff is a Canadian artist and filmmaker. He received his BFA in Drawing and Painting from OCADU before moving to New York where he received his MFA in Fine Arts. He now lives in Los Angeles and works in painting, drawing, sculpture and film.

Andrea Luka Zimmerman is an artist, cultural activist and filmmaker. She is the first director to be shortlisted for both the Grierson and Jarman Awards, and in 2017 Zimmerman received the Artangel Open Award for her feature drama Cycle, produced in collaboration with Adrian Jackson. Currently she teaches at Central St. Martins in London, where she also studied for her PhD.