Midi Onodera: LANDSCAPING

Still image from A Canadian Ghost Story: The Quilt for Joyce Wieland (2025). Directed by Anna Feldman Gronau & Midi Onodera. Super8, Hi8, Toy Cameras. Courtesy of the artists.

Dandelion and Factory Media Centre are pleased to co-present

Midi Onodera: LANDSCAPING

Curated by Lesley Loksi Chan

Opening / Screening
Saturday, June 7 | 2pm
Dandelion Pop-Up in Jackson Square
2 King St W, Hamilton, ON
Unit across from Heroes N Legends

Films + Fortunes + Toy Camera Workshop by Midi Onodera
June 7 – July 23, 2025 | Wed – Sun | 11am – 6pm
Dandelion Pop-Up in Jackson Square

The Series by Midi Onodera
June 10 – July 23, 2025 | Mon – Fri | 12pm – 5pm
Factory Media Centre
366 Victoria Ave N, Hamilton, ON
Entrance at back parking lot

This summer, moving-image artist Midi Onodera calls on her film phantoms, art pals, and past selves to produce a double-sited exhibition, inviting us to consider a vacant shopping mall unit and an historic electricity building as landscapes for the wandering spirits of experimental cinema, commerce, and time.

Through installations of analog films and videos, afternoon screenings, a toy camera workshop, and a fortune-telling hand puppet, Onodera reflects on the evolving politics of art and the undying influence of feminist film icons Joyce Wieland and Chantal Akerman on her practice.

To celebrate the opening of LANDSCAPING, Onodera will debut A Canadian Ghost Story: The Quilt for Joyce Wieland (2025), a new collaborative film made with Anna Feldman Gronau. Their creative partnership began with the making of split-screen sensation Ten Cents a Dance (1985), directed by Onodera, and continued with the poetic Mary Mary (1989), directed by Feldman Gronau – both of which are featured in this programme. Also included are Onodera’s seminal film The Displaced View (1988), and her before/after duet Ville-quelle ville? (1984) and C’est à Qui, Cette Ville? (2022). Pathbreaking and crucial, these new and early films are presented alongside her ongoing Series project.

Since 2006, Onodera has produced an annual series of short videos known as “vidoodles,” a term she coined to describe her daily video-making discipline, exercises which function much like journaling or sketching. The full set of Series, spanning from 2006 through the latest 2024 edition, will be exhibited for the first time in its entirety. Seen together, the moving-images in this exhibition speak to Onodera’s lifelong quest to understand the relationships between media technologies, ways of seeing, and the frictional landscapes / seascapes / cityscapes of her times.

Set across two Hamilton locations – the Dandelion Pop-Up in a former board games shop in Jackson Square shopping mall and the Factory Media Centre gallery in the former Cataract Power Company Building – Midi Onodera: LANDSCAPING is a seasonal reshaping of the grounds of filmmaking, its counter-histories and other question-marked spaces.

Still image from Crystal clear water (2021) vidoodle from the Spam Baam series, Directed by Midi Onodera. Toy Camera. Courtesy of the artist.

The Series at FMC

Over the course of the exhibit, Factory Media Centre will screen every annual edition from Onodera’s Series project – 625 vidoodles made over 18 years and counting.

See full screening schedule.

Some toy cameras from Midi Onodera’s collection. Image by Midi Onodera & Lesley Loksi Chan.

Toy Camera Workshop at Dandelion Pop-Up

Midi Onodera has a personal collection of over forty toy cameras. In this one-day workshop, she will give an artist talk about the use of toy cameras in her practice and participants will experiment with the artist’s collection. Free. Limited spots. Registration required. info@dandelionfilm.ca

See full list of events + screenings + fortune-tellings.

About the Artists

Midi Onodera is an award-winning filmmaker and media artist who has been making films and videos for more than 35 years. She has produced over 25 independent shorts, ranging from 16mm film to digital video to toy camera formats. In 2018 she received the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts. Skin Deep (1995), her theatrical feature, screened internationally at festivals including the Rotterdam International Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival. Her film The Displaced View (1988) was nominated for Best Documentary at the Gemini Awards. Her experimental narrative project ALPHAGIRLS (2002) was the first Canadian interactive performance art DVD, and since 2006 she has made over 500 vidoodles (defined as bite-sized 30-second to 2-minute video doodles). Onodera’s work is held in collections around the world, and she has given lectures and workshops across North America and Japan. She currently teaches and continues to work on experimental media projects in Toronto.

As a filmmaker, writer, and cultural organizer, Anna Feldman Gronau played a vital role in shaping Toronto’s independent and co-operative filmmaking community. Born in Montreal in 1951 and raised in Hamilton, she became a central figure in Toronto’s experimental film scene in the early 1980s serving as Director and Programmer of the Funnel Experimental Film Theatre and Video Distribution Manager at Art Metropole. She has written and lectured extensively on feminism and the avant-garde, and is the founder of the Ontario Film and Video Against Censorship Society. Feldman Gronau’s rigorous films and contributions to local underground art scenes in the 1980s-2000s helped pave the way for contemporary cultures of critical, indie and DIY filmmaking across Canada.

About the Curator

Lesley Loksi Chan is an artist, filmmaker and cultural worker based upon the traditional territories of the Eerie, Neutral, Huron-Wendat, Haudenosaunee and Mississaugas. Her films have been screened nationally and internationally including at the Vancouver International Film Festival, Textile Museum of Canada, Anthology Film Archives (New York City), National Gallery of Art (Washington D.C.), British Film Institute (London, UK), and Berlin International Film Festival. As a cultural worker, she sees arts programming as collective exercises in learning and unlearning.

Contact

info@dandelionfilm.ca | dandelionfilm.ca | @dandelion_film_collective

info@factorymediacentre.ca | factorymediacentre.ca | @factorymediacentre

Land Acknowledgement

This program takes place in Hamilton, Canada, which is upon the traditional territories of the Eerie, Neutral, Huron-Wendat, Haudenosaunee and Mississaugas. This land is covered by the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant, which was an agreement between the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabek to share and care for the resources around the Great Lakes.

Accessibility

Dandelion Pop-Up in Jackson Square is fully accessible.

Factory Media Centre is accessible from the main back entrance. Learn more.

Midi Onodera: LANDSCAPING is part of Dandelion’s Light Study Series and made with the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts.