In Residence

In Residence

with projects by Sameer Farooq, Serena Lee, Petrina Ng, Annie Wong, and the Aboriginal Curatorial Collective

Organized by Aisle 4

July – November 2019
Scarborough Museum

In Residence is an artist-in-residence series at the Scarborough Museum that examines the role of a colonial house museum in present-day Scarborough. Seeking to expand the museum’s institutional scope, five artists and collectives will be invited to introduce new narratives, perspectives, and timeframes that build stronger linkages with the surrounding Bendale neighbourhood.

The participating artists will contend with the existing structures of house museums, and introduce new narratives and perspectives into established storylines. Focusing on ideas of intergenerational, diasporic traditions; cross-cultural hauntologies; traditional labour and leisure practices; and experimental culinary interventions, the artists will activate the site with attention on the targeted demographics adjacent to the museum.

In Residence is a collaboration with the dedicated staff at the Scarborough Museum to both challenge and enhance its function as an operating “historical” site through contemporary art and social practice. Each artist/collective will inhabit a space at the Museum and create work in conversation with local residents, business owners, and community organizations during their projected residency period. The Museum will become a temporary home, office, or studio in which artists can conduct research, create work, workshop ideas, host meetings, and run public programs.

See how each artist residency unfolds by checking our website and social media outlets starting July 1.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS AND COLLECTIVES

Sameer Farooq is a Canadian artist of Pakistani and Ugandan Indian descent. His interdisciplinary practice investigates tactics of representation and enlists the tools of sculpture, installation, photography, documentary filmmaking, writing and the methods of anthropology to explore various forms of collecting, interpreting, and display. The result is often a collaborative work which counterbalances how dominant institutions speak about our lives: a counter-archive, new additions to a museum collection, or a buried history made visible. With exhibitions at institutions around the world including the Aga Khan Museum (Toronto), the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto), The British Library (London), the Institute of Islamic Culture (Paris), the Lilley Museum (Reno), Vicki Myhren Gallery (Denver), the Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver), Maquis Projects, (Izmir), Trankat (Tétouan, Morocco), Sol Koffler Gallery (Providence), Artellewa (Cairo), and Sanat Limani (Istanbul), Farooq received several awards from The Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council, and the Europe Media Fund, as well the President’s Scholarship at the Rhode Island School of Design. Reviews and essays dedicated to his work have been included in Canadian Art, The Washington Post, BBC Culture, Hyperallergic, Artnet, The Huffington Post, C Magazine, and others. He was longlisted for the Sobey Art Award in 2018.

Serena Lee’s practice stems from a fascination with polyphony and its radical potential. She layers time-based media and works collaboratively and discursively. Recent projects have been presented at Cubitt (London) and Transmediale (Berlin), as part of feminist reading collective Read-in, and with Christina Battle as SHATTERED MOON ALLIANCE. Serena is a researcher in the PhD-in-Practice Programme at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.

Petrina Ng is a visual artist and cultural worker based in Toronto. Her multi-form practice looks at diasporic loss and legacy through a lens of decolonization. Recent exhibition sites include Humber Galleries (Toronto), FOFA Gallery (Montréal), Blackwood Gallery (Mississauga), and Zalucky Contemporary (Toronto). Petrina also publishes books about art in collaboration with designer Rachel Wallace as the imprint, Durable Good. She holds an MFA from the Slade School of Fine Art and is currently a curator of contemporary art at the Small Arms Inspection Building/Museums of Mississauga.

Annie Wong is a writer and multidisciplinary artist working in performance and installation. Conceptually diverse, her practice explores the intersections between the politic and poetic in everyday life. Her current research focuses on the ways in which affective knowledge, particularly intergenerational feminist anger, the melancholy of ancestral amnesia, and hauntologies of diasporic displacement, are embodied in these muddied intersections. Wong’s practice is heavily collaborative and often engages diasporic communities to produce a collective form of carework as the basis for artistic production, allyship building, and spiritualism. Wong has presented in solo and group exhibitions extensively across North America and has been awarded residencies with the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Power Plant (Toronto, ON), and Khyber Centre for the Arts (Halifax, NS). Her literary practice in poetry, art writing, and non-fiction can be found in The Shanghai Literary Review, C Magazine, Canadian Art, and MICE Magazine.

The Aboriginal Curatorial Collective / Collectif des commissaires autochtones (ACC-CCA) is an Indigenous arts organization that advocates, activates, and engages on behalf of Canadian and international Indigenous curators, critics, artists and representatives of arts and cultural organizations. The ACC-CCA develops and programs curatorial projects, researches Indigenous practices and educates through critical discourses on Indigenous arts and cultures. The ACC-CCA builds relationships for Indigenous artists and curators by supporting equitable collaboration and exchange within larger arts communities. The ACC-CCA focuses on increasing opportunities for Indigenous artists and curators within established arts institutions and champions the development of new Indigenous-controlled arts spaces. The ACC-CCA collaborates, challenges, and engages in critical discourse, always viewing the arts through a contemporary Indigenous lens.

ABOUT THE CURATORS

Aisle 4 is a four-person curatorial project that initiates and promotes socially engaged artwork. Based in Toronto, the collective collaborates with artists from a range of disciplines, presenting site-specific and critical public art experiences that reach beyond core arts audiences.

ABOUT THE SITE

Scarborough Museum shows the history and development of Scarborough from its incorporation in 1850 to its growth and emergence as a major suburb in the 20th century. The site and its gardens are situated in Scarborough, the territory of many nations including the Mississaugas of the New Credit, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples, and home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples. The property was occupied by David and Mary Thomson, who immigrated to Scarborough in the late 1790s from Scotland.

In Residence was generously supported by the Toronto Arts Council. Thank you to the staff at the Scarborough Museum for your enthusiasm, encouragement, and care.

For inquiries:
e: info@aisle4.ca
www.aisle4.ca
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