Fall Exhibitions at McIntosh Gallery

September 20 – December 7, 2024
Opening Reception: Friday, September 20 from 6:00 to 8:00pm

Sanaz Mazinani, Shadow Wars, 2014/2024 (detail view). Courtesy of the Artist and Stephen Bulger Gallery

Sanaz Mazinani: From Elsewhere to Here

Curated by Helen Gregory

From Elsewhere to Here brings together elements of Mazinani’s art practice that are taken from multiple previous exhibitions, creating an archaeological survey of the past and present. Vision, perception, conflict, and war have been important themes in Mazinani’s practice for two decades, and still resonate within her practice and the broader socio-cultural landscape today.

Suspended coloured acrylic panels cast coloured shadows that combine and recombine, shifting how we perceive the other elements in the installation. These colour filters invite us to think about how we receive information, and to consider the lenses that affect our perception. These chromatic illuminations cast light across deceptively beautiful wall-paper panels that offer a different reading on closer viewing. Mazinani’s tessellated wallpaper panels initially suggest abstracted images derived from Islamic ornamentation. However, when examined more closely, the fractured imagery reveals the machinery of war repeated infinitely. These kaleidoscopic images fold in on one another: a soldier stands in a desert landscape; a drone pierces the cerulean sky. This work challenges us to critically analyse what we are seeing when we look at images of war and the rhetoric that surrounds it, as well as referencing the use of digital technologies in military operations, specifically focusing on images of unmanned drones. Read more

Jamelie Hassan, The Copyist, 1995. Mixed media including black and white photograph, copper, ceramic tablet, ceramic slippers, 18th century manuscript Arabic/ Persian grammar, wooden bookstand, child’s pencil sharpener, cotton cloth and wooden platform. McIntosh Gallery Collection, Western University. Purchase, The Walter and Duncan Gordon Charitable Foundation, 1996

In Search of a Loss of Self: The Language of Alterity

Curated by Soheila Esfahani & Mélika Hashemi

Expanding on Edward Said’s original thesis in Orientalism (1978), which focused primarily on the colonial [re]imagining of the East, In Search of a Loss of Self: The Language of Alterity is a journey of self-discovery. First and second-generation Muslim-Canadian artists and scholars, Soheila Esfahani and Mélika Hashemi perform a survey of the McIntosh Gallery Permanent Collection, yet fail to see themselves reflected in collected works or under database search keywords. Consequently, they argue that Islamic art and artists fall into the cracks of collection acquisition practices.

As Legacy Russell writes in her manifesto, Glitch Feminism (2020), “In the moments of glitch, a break occurs in the expected flow, and in this break, it is possible to create an intervention, to slip new codes into the system and explore freely in the cracks”. In search of a loss of self, the co-curators realised “loss” didn’t really mean they were at a loss, and not all ‘gaps’ meant they fell through the cracks – rather, they had more space to explore freely. This process allows Esfahani and Hashemi to explore the possibilities of reconstructions, creating new meanings and interpretations through a poetic gesture – or code – that calls upon the collective to confront erasure and condemnation. Read more

Public Programming

Fall Exhibitions Opening Reception
Friday, September 20 from 6:00 to 8:00pm | Remarks at 6:30pm
Complimentary after hours parking available at select campus lots. Learn more

Curator-led Exhibition Tours
Saturday, October 5 from 1:00 to 3:00pm
Complimentary after hours parking available at select campus lots. Learn more

Sanaz Mazinani Artist Talk
Thursday, November 14 from 7:00 to 9:00pm on Zoom
Free | Registration is required

McIntosh Gallery
1151 Richmond Street
London, ON N6A 3K7
mcintoshgallery.ca
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Our Hours
Monday to Friday: 10am – 5pm
Saturday: 12 – 4pm
Sundays and Holidays: Closed

McIntosh Gallery offers free admission to all exhibitions and events
We regret that McIntosh Gallery is not wheelchair accessible.