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My Culture Includes My Scene explores how identities and cultural discourses are constructed and communicated now that diversity is recognized to be about much more than ethnicity. The ideas and activities of so-called “sub-cultures” are integral to both personal experience and the development of culture at large. We recognize interdisciplinarity, hybridization, re-mixing and appropriation as forms of artistic practice, but they are also strategies used by individuals in the construction of personal identity. While some individuals may engage in this process more deliberately and self-consciously than others, the action of taking and re-contextualizing ideas and imagery from the outside world remains the same. My Culture Includes My Scene features new and recent work by 16 contemporary artists with ties to the Ottawa region. Exploring the categories of “culture” and “subculture” through cross-cultural and multi-disciplinary means, these artists recognize identity as something that is constructed in complex and multiple ways. Many have chosen to examine the significant influence of popular and consumer culture on this process. In their work, they question the notion that identity can be defined according to ethnographic or geo-political heritage alone. Answering the question “where are you from?” is no longer enough to explain who you are. Milena Placentile is Resident Curator at the Ottawa Art Gallery thanks to funding from the Canada Council's Assistance to Culturally Diverse Curators for Residencies in the Visual Arts Program.
EventsLaunch Party! Performance by Hazel Meyer
Recommended Viewing in Collaboration with Invisible Cinema (315 Lisgar Street)
Characters In Space: Youth Workshop with Ottawa Artists Ryan Stec and Howie Tsui Artist Talk with Greg Hill
Performance by Hazel Meyer
Artist Talk with Hazel Meyer
Curator Talk with Milena Placentile
Talk with Professor Diane Pacom (Department of Sociology, University of Ottawa):
Cultural Fragmentation and Plural Identities in Contemporary Society
Performance by Hazel Meyer
At the closing of My Culture Includes My Scene at the Ottawa Art Gallery, Greg Hill will perform "Portaging the Rideau, Paddling the Ottawa to Kanata." The performance will involve a portage of his canoe from OAG to the base of the Rideau Canal Locks from where he will launch his "Cereal Box Canoe," paddle to Victory (Victoria) Island, and on safe arrival raise the Flag of Kanata.
Tiffany Beaudin began her career in video after being accepted into a six-month training program at SAW Video. For two years following the program, she began freelance editing and worked on a variety of projects including art videos, documentaries, PSAs, promotional videos and short films. She is currently finishing the Editor's Lab program at the Canadian Film Centre. As part of Team Tekki Techy, Tiffany won a video editing “remix” competition at SAW Gallery. Tiffany co-edited the feature film, Horsie’s Retreat, a hallucinogenic look into an ex-junkies dark past, an Ultra-Low Budget feature produced through the CFC’s Feature Film Project. Stéphanie Brodeur, an emerging artist from Ottawa, is completing her BFA at the University of Ottawa with a concentration in philosophy. She specializes in digital and electronic art, interactive installations and non-traditional forms of drawing. Her conceptual work is presented through a simple and clean aesthetic allowing the focus to remain on essential meaning. Combining programming, electronic circuits and found objects, her work constructs visual or audible representations of invisible or intangible phenomena. She also creates works that blur the boundaries between sensory experiences to alter perspectives and gain insight into reality’s constituents. Firuz Daud is an alumnus of Ryerson Polytechnic University's Image Arts program. He has been a producing member at SAW Video co-op since 1997, and he has worked as an editor and motion graphics artist for broadcast on stations such as City TV and the CBC. He is currently a graphic artist at Black Cherry Digital Media. As member of Team Tekki Techy, one of his award winning videos was screened in Finland and Estonia as part of a ten year Ottawa video retrospective. He has a cat named Puck. Firuz likes Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas better than anything. Darsha Hewitt was born in Ottawa Ontario in 1982. She is currently finishing her Bachelor of Fine Arts and Arts Administration at the University of Ottawa. Her practice is interdisciplinary, often combining performance and interactivity with new media. She frequently acts as trickster in her works to create a playful impression of her false products and constructed scenarios. Greg Hill is a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores his Kanyen'kehaka (Mohawk) and French-Canadian identity through the prism of colonialism, nationalism and concepts of place and community. Born in Fort Erie, Ontario, Hill is a member of the Six Nations of the Grand River First Nation. He has been exhibiting across Canada and abroad since 1989. His work can be found in the collections of the Indian Art Centre, Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, the Canadian Native Arts Foundation, the Woodland Cultural Centre, the City of Ottawa, the International Museum of Electrography in Spain. He is the recipient of several awards. Dipna Horra is an artist whose fields include painting, photography, sculpture and installations. After completing a degree in architecture, she lived in New York and Montreal, where she worked as an architect, artist and teacher. She has presented her paintings and photographs in Brooklyn, Manhattan, Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto. As a curator and art director, she has worked with the National Gallery of Canada, and on independent, inter-disciplinary productions. Hazel Meyer creates textile-based performance projects. Born in 1979, she grew up in the southeast end of Ottawa across from a small arboreal paradise, which has now been transformed into a maze of identical semi-detached houses. Meyer, who holds a BFA in Studio Arts from Concordia University, has exhibited in galleries in Canada and the US, but she favours football fields, city streets and the outside of coats for her projects’ dissemination. Recent projects include: Unnecessary Roughness, an audio-intestinal sports opera with Richard Parry and The Aesthetics of Athletics with Tamar Meyer, a project of sports, stripes and signifiers. Born in Ottawa in 1979, Tibi Tibi Neuspiel pursued some visual arts training in high school, but is otherwise a self-taught artist. Currently living in Toronto, Neuspiel has exhibited throughout Toronto and in New York City. In addition to pursuing a studio practice, he has designed and executed several commissioned murals and has worked as a guest teacher of painting at a children’s day care centre. Neuspiel is represented by Gallery Neubacher in Toronto. Born in Caracas, Venezuela and raised in Ottawa, Juan Carlos Noria has been a figure skater and skateboarder, and is now best known as a graffiti artist and proponent of live painting. Currently living in Barcelona, Noria has participated in numerous collaborative and community-based projects in Ottawa and Montreal, and he has also exhibited his painting on canvas in Toronto, New York, Kansas City, Paris, London and Barcelona. In his own words, Noria would describe himself as quick to laugh, quick to see and quicker to paint ripe commentary on our times. Ryan Stec is a Winnipeg born/Ottawa-based media artist and curator. His work spans a variety of genres from documentary to experimental live video. In 2004, his documentary feature, Bastard, premiered with the Canadian Film Institute, and his short experimental project, Dead End Job, premiered at MUU Gallery in Helsinki, Finland. He has been involved in Ottawa’s artist run culture since 1998, and has co-curated the Remix program since 2002, which has been presented at SAW Video and Platform Gallery in Vaasa, Finland, among other venues. Stec is a board member of SAW Video and regularly hosts the VJ Lab, Configure. Born in Moncton (1974), Jason St-Laurent is an Ottawa-based artist and curator. He studied fine arts at the Université de Moncton and the University of Toronto and has exhibited in Canada, the United States, South Africa and Finland. As a curator, he has presented over 50 projects worldwide including SCATALOGUE: 30 Years of Crap in Contemporary Art at Galerie SAW Gallery, Voices in Transit at the Cape Town Central Train Station in South Africa and Videogram International Media Art Exchange. St-Laurent is a founding member of the art and design collective CODE RÉGIONAL and a programmer for SAW Video. Born in Moncton (1974), Stefan St-Laurent lives in Ottawa and works as the co-artistic director of Galerie SAW Gallery . His performance, photography and video have been exhibited in France, Sweden, Russia and China, among numerous other counties. His curatorial projects have been exhibited at venues such as the Lux Centre (London), Les rencontres internationals Vidéo Art Plastique (Hirouville, France), and the Cinémathèque Québécois (Montreal). He has been a programmer for the Images Festival of Independent Film & Video (Toronto), V tape (Toronto), and the Festival international du cinéma francophone en Acadie (Moncton). He is currently touring Canada to talk about curatorial trends in artist-run centers and public galleries. Born in Hong Kong (1978), Ho Yan (Howie) Tsui soon after relocated to Lagos, Nigeria. During these nascent years, Howie: 1) went on safaris in Kenya 2) got a concussion on the London Bridge 3) confronted ghosts in a haunted hotel in Manila, and 4) had hallucinations of Disney characters during a near-fatal fever. In 1983, his family immigrated to Thunder Bay where he assimilated into western culture through street hockey and heavy metal music. Tsui developed his drawing skills through depictions of Kiss members, sports icons, and He-Man figures. He received his BFA from the University of Waterloo (2002) and is currently painting and illustrating in Ottawa. Tungda Browne ( Shaun Elie - guitar & vocals, Colin Gibson - bass & vocals, and Stephen Weir - drums & vocals) seeks to produce music that offers meaningful commentary on socio-political issues, but is at the same time genuine and fun. Their songs contain elements of 1960’s and 70’s rock-and-roll, reggae, hip-hop and cow-punk, in a juxtaposition of ideas, styles and attitudes derived from pop-music, art, politics, and philosophy. In 2004, Tungda Browne began playing art galleries including Gallery 115, (University of Ottawa) and Club SAW. They believe that placing rock music in the “white cube” allows them to challenge boundaries between music and art. While living in Toronto, Milena Placentile was actively involved with the arts community through her capacity as Assistant Curator at the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery (University of Toronto) and as a member of A Space Gallery's Programming Committee. She has also worked at the Textile Museum of Canada, and participated in the Curatorial Work/Study Program at The Banff Centre. Having recently received her Master of Museum Studies (University of Toronto), she is currently working with the Ottawa Art Gallery as a recipient of a grant made possible through the Canada Council’s Culturally Diverse Curators for Residencies in Visual Arts Program. |
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