Hitesh Natalwala, It suddenly struck her, fate had taken a turn for the worse, Detail, 2007, Paper collage. |
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Doris McCarthy Gallery
University of Toronto Scarborough
1265 Military Trail
416-287-7007
Toronto
Urban Myths
& Modern Fables,
Hamra Abbas, Khadim Ali, Henna Nadeem, Hitesh Natalwala, Tazeen Qayyum, Nusra Latif Qureshi& Naeem Rana, Sabeen Raja, Amin Rehman, Sangeeta Sandrasegar, and Alia Toor
Curated by Haema Sivanesan
March 19-May 11, 2008
Drawing on the notion of myth, a perpetuating narrative featuring heroic or supernatural characters and events, or the idea of a fable, an aphoristic or instructive story, these artists employ fictive strategies to comment on the contemporary world. Working with conceptual techniques of visual puns, quotation and metaphor the works in this exhibition re-invent and challenge master narratives informing perceptions of culture. The work of these artists speaks of culture as operating between the past and the present, the real and the imagined, as an ongoing process of myth-making and story-telling.
Urban Myths & Modern Fables is an exhibition of new work by contemporary artists of Indian and Pakistani background, working in Canada and the international diaspora.
The artists included in this exhibition work in a variety of media and techniques — in painting, collage, paper cut-outs, digital print-making and computer generated animation. Their works reference the visual traditions of the sub-continent through the use of distinctive, culturally specific images and techniques drawn from traditional or historical sources. But these artists re-fashion this imagery in order to undertake a critical exploration of the language of contemporary art.
This exhibition takes a focused aesthetic and thematic approach and situates the work of some key emerging Canadian artists of Indian / Pakistani background alongside their peers in the international milieu. |
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