Proximities

Opening Reception: Saturday, June 18, 2:00-4:00 pm

Where does the real you exist? Technology is embedded in the fabric of our daily lives. The artists in this exhibition,  Nahed Mansour, Lee Nutbean and Giles Whitaker probe the proximity of our relation to technology in the current paradigm; how it affects and shapes us, how we mold it, and the overlaps between. Drawing from popular sitcoms from childhood, Mansour considers the ways racial identities are performed and negotiated in a post-colonial present. A post-internet artist, Nutbean employs ‘total public transparency’ as a means to intervene within the personal information economy across social media platforms. Whitaker generates real-time animations and soundtracks through coding in an effort to critique the technological infrastructure that underpins society as well as the machinic processes that operate autonomously. Proximities asks us to consider the social impact of technology on the political ecology of self, other and community.

This exhibition is accompanied by an essay written by Taien Ng-Chan and can be downloaded HERE.

Nahed Mansour is a Toronto-based independent visual artist and curator. Her performance, installation, and video works draw from personal and historic archives to address representations of gender and racial relationships. She graduated from Concordia University’s MFA program, and is the Programming Coordinator at SAVAC (South Asian Visual Arts Centre).

Lee Nutbean is a postinternet artist working at the transdisciplinary intersections of art and computation, across academia, research and the creative industries. His work explores the evolution of smart networked technologies through the participatory design of provocative prototypes that elicit, process and respond to inspirational data. These electronic ecologies culturally probe the dynamic networks within and between corporeal and viral spaces, to reveal new phenomena that confront, question and push new digital practices.

Giles Whitaker works with video, photography, machines, microcontrollers, andfound objects. Sound is a key element of his installations, which aim to reveal and analyze the political and cultural properties of the spaces they occupy. Giles completed his undergraduate degree in Wellington, New Zealand, and his MFA at Western University, London, Ontario. His past exhibitions in New Zealand and Canada include abstract video, sound, and interactive multimedia installations.