Something Like Arriving

Inaugural Exhibition of The Next Contemporary

Something Like Arriving

Alize Zorlutuna
Diyar Mayil
Sukaina Kubba

February 25 – April 22, 2023
Opening Reception: Saturday February 25, 2:00 to 6:00 pm
The Next Contemporary, Toronto

The Next Contemporary is pleased to present Something Like Arriving, the Gallery’s inaugural exhibition featuring works by Sukaina Kubba, Diyar Mayil, and Alize Zorlutuna. Opening on 25th February 2023, the exhibition looks at comfort beyond a physical state, as a complete sensorial experience felt through the lens of diverse artistic interpretations. Each artist unmakes and remakes the idea of home, translating space and reimagining domestic objects as languages of both belonging and estrangement. The artists investigate the relationships of comfort and place to aesthetics and the tension that occurs when objects are physically familiar, but visually or psychologically uncomfortable. Working across varied disciplines, the three artists trace distance through laborious and devotional material processes.

Diyar Mayil, Sweep, Cherry wood, natural fibers. Photo: Alberto Porro.

Please join us on 25th from 2:00 to 6:00 pm in celebration of opening The Next Contemporary and its mandate, with an evening filled with art, love, learning and of course wine! All three artists will be in presence for the opening reception.

Sukaina Kubba, Corners of Your Sky, Al-Qantoor, hand-drawn PLA filament.

About the Artists

Alize Zorlutuna is a queer interdisciplinary artist, writer and educator whose work explores relationships to land, culture and the more-than-human, while thinking through history, ancestral wisdom and healing. Having moved between Tkarón:to and Anatolia (present-day Turkey) both physically and culturally throughout their life has informed Alize’s practice—making them attentive to spaces of encounter. Alize enlists poetics and a sensitivity to materials in works that span video, installation, printed matter, performance and sculpture. The body and its sensorial capacities are central to their work.

Diyar Mayil is an artist working in sculpture, installation and performance. Comfort, discomfort, adaptation, and the acceptance of different bodies in both public and private are recurring subjects in her practice. Her work has been supported by Canada Council for the Arts, Conseil des arts de Montréal and has recently been shown at La Centrale Galerie Powerhouse, Printemps numérique, Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, NARS Foundation in NYC and Centre Clark in MTL. Upcoming commitments include a fellowship at Concordia University and a Solo exhibition at Circa in Montréal. She holds a BFA from Concordia University, where she has recently completed her MFA. She is the 2022 Laureate for the Claudine and Stephen Bronfman Fellowship in Contemporary Art. Originally from Istanbul, she now lives and works in Montreal.

Sukaina Kubba is a Toronto-based artist with a multi-disciplinary and material-based practice. Her work is strongly rooted in material and cultural research, story-telling, drawing and drawing connections. She works with industrial materials in their capacity as signifiers and concrete indices, and investigates their place in painting, drawing, architecture, craft and digital practices. Kubba has been researching travelling objects, textiles and vehicles -such as rugs, trains, cruise ships and carriers- as containers of cross-cultural histories and relational narratives; and exploring packaging materials and travelogues as generative devices in her studio practice and art collaborations.