Artist and Curator in Conversation: Emmanuelle Léonard with Louise Déry

Emmanuelle Léonard, Soldat la nuit [Soldier at Night], Resolute, 2019, inkjet print © Emmanuelle Léonard

Artist and Curator in Conversation
Emmanuelle Léonard: Deployment

Presented by the Ryerson Image Centre
Online via Zoom
Wednesday, November 10, 2021
7 pm ET
Free

Join Emmanuelle Léonard in conversation with Louise Déry, director of the Galerie de l’UQAM and guest curator of Deployment. Léonard and Déry will enter a dialogue on the themes presented in the exhibition, consisting of photographic portraits and a two-channel video made during Léonard’s research residency in 2018, under the Canadian Forces Artists Program in the Far North. Deployment brings the elements of Canada’s military operations into sharp contrast against a backdrop of endless snow in the remote Resolute (Qausuittuq) sector of Nunavut. Elaborating on these elements, Léonard and Déry will explore strategic military deployment in this region of the world, where the national, political, and economic stakes have been made more urgent by global warming; the commitment of young adults to the army’s collective values and their involvement as motivated by a personal quest; and the indispensable contribution of the Inuit to learning how to survive in polar regions.

Emmanuelle Léonard (Canadian, born 1971) lives and works in Montreal. She holds a master’s degree from Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). Her work has been shown in numerous exhibitions, including at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal; Galerie de l’UQAM, Montreal; Kunsthaus Dresden and Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Germany; Glassbox, Paris; Mercer Union and Gallery 44, Toronto; and many others. She was featured in the 2012 Grange Prize exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), Toronto, and was one of three finalists for the 2020 Scotiabank Photography Award.

Emmanuelle Léonard, Deployment (installation view), 2021 © James Morley, Ryerson
Image Centre

EXHIBITIONS ON VIEW:

Scotiabank Photography Award: Dana Claxton
September 15–December 4, 2021

Drawing from Indigenous history, contemporary culture, and spirituality, this exhibition celebrates the career of Vancouver-based artist Dana Claxton, winner of the 2020 Scotiabank Photography Award. A Hunkpapa Lakota photographer and filmmaker, Claxton examines stereotypes and representations of Indigenous peoples in popular culture. This selection of artworks confronts issues of colonialist appropriation and commodification through an wide-ranging exploration of the artist’s family and community in the Great Plains, Saskatchewan.

Susan Dobson: Slide | Lecture
September 15–December 4, 2021

In Slide | Lecture, Guelph-based photographer Susan Dobson reconsiders the materiality, physicality, and meaning of abandoned university slide libraries. Her precisely composed images of these outdated photographic transparencies, originally made to be projected in art history lectures, expose the canonical biases of traditional visual culture—dominated by Western male artists, while marginalizing or excluding art by those outside the establishment. Slide | Lecture gleans revelations about outdated views from these obsolete materials, hinting a way forward toward more diverse and inclusive representations.

Emmanuelle Léonard: Deployment
September 15–December 4, 2021

Montreal-based artist Emmanuelle Léonard captured the complex realities of Canada’s strategic military imperatives in the Far North during a 2018 residency. Deployment, a two-channel video accompanied by photographic portraits, focuses on the passage of time experienced by soldiers posted to the Canadian Arctic, showing everyday moments against an infinite backdrop of snow and northern night—a place where the climate crisis has intensified the national, political, and economic stakes.

Hal Wilsdon: I would die for Johnny Knoxville and I would shoot Chris Burden
November 3–December 4, 2021

In her photographic series I would die for Johnny Knoxville and I would shoot Chris Burden, Hal Wilsdon performs physical feats for the camera, from riding a pogo stick blindfolded to releasing a fire extinguisher on her face. With equal parts irreverence and homage, her photographs are inspired by the 1970s performance works of Chris Burden (who famously had himself shot) and the ridiculous stunts performed by actor Johnny Knoxville in his reality TV show Jackass. In this series of self-portraits, Wilsdon questions the gaze with which viewers consume and are fascinated by the physical danger inherent in such acts.

UPCOMING ONLINE EVENTS

Noon Time Collection Talk: Edward Burtynsky
Thursday, November 18, 12 pm

Tanenbaum Lecture: Wendy Ewald
Presented with the Stephen Bulger Gallery
November 19, 7 pm

Please visit ryersonimagecentre.ca/events for full details.

Ryerson Image Centre
33 Gould Street
Toronto, Ontario, Canada

ADMISSION IS ALWAYS FREE

NEW HOURS
Monday: Closed
Tuesday: Tours by appointment
Wednesday: 12–6 pm
Thursday: 12–6 pm
Friday: 12–6 pm
Saturday: 12–6 pm
Sunday: Closed

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