Colour of Women

May 5 – July 9, 2022
Sur Gallery, 39 Queens Quay East, Suite 100, Toronto, ON, M5E 0A5

PROGRAMMING

Opening Reception at Sur Gallery:
Thursday, May 5, 6-8PM In-person
RSVP here

Curator Tour with Tamara Toledo:
Thursday, May 12, 7 ET on Zoom
RSVP here

Online Artist Talk with soJin Chun and Yelaine Rodriguez:
Thursday, June 9, 6 PM ET on Zoom
RSVP here

ABOUT EXHIBITION

Complimentary colours work together within a painting. Colours fuse, adopt, blend, and join. Colours cast harmonious compositions, they help each other shine, and they facilitate a multiplicity that expands or captures our understanding of the world. Colours have been a place of solace, contemplation, healing, and comfort. Colours provide an outlet and space to adjust to the instability of our contemporary lives. Those same collaborative networks of solidarity form between women who choose the strength of colour to defy erasure.

The artists Dinorah Catzalco, soJin Chun, Lido Pimienta, and Yelaine Rodriguez resist hierarchal systems of power and reverse the black and white dichotomies that permeate in today’s polarized and violent societies, indicative of a capitalism in crisis. They stand up to class and racial divisions by choosing the weapon of colour as a medium to construct new systems of care, alternative perspectives of kinship, different forms of labour distribution, and foster a place for colour to assume its ability to heal rather than to divide.

Labelled as “women of colour” these artists find within its power a site to overcome pain and claim a space for fulfillment as they propose sites of contestation. Through the potential of colour they heal wounds inflicted by neocolonialism, neoliberal economies, and patriarchal structures. The artists reflect on the future by learning from a past, and navigate decolonizing methods to move forward, using the multiplicity and power of colour to offer a place of comfort and relief in times of polarization and division.

Curated by Tamara Toledo

Yelaine Rodriguez, detail Oshun Orisha of Fertility: Help Us Birth Generations of Revolutionary Womxn, 2020. Image courtesy of the artist.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

DINORAH CATZALCO is a Mexican artist based in the Ottawa-Gatineau region. Catzalco earned a BFA at the Université du Québec in Outaouais in 2007. Her works have been shown in various solo and group exhibitions such as the Centre d’art La Sarre, the Galerie Montcalm, La Tohu: the city of circus arts in Montreal, among others. In 2018, her travelling exhibition Tecocuahuitl: l’axe du monde was nominated at the Culturiades gala in the category Prix du CALQ- Work of the Year in the Outaouais region. In 2019, her work featured in a group exhibition Codex: la traversée du silence with the support from the Conseil des arts de Montréal.

soJin CHUN is a Toronto-based artist, curator, and educator that explores the alternative dialogues that emerge in-between cultures and disciplines. Chun has participated in numerous international film festivals such as the Oberhausen International Film (Germany), VideoFormes (France), and CineToro (Colombia). She has exhibited Internationally in DIY art spaces, galleries, and museums. soJin’s video works are represented by GIV (Montreal), CFMDC (Toronto) and V-Tape (Toronto). Chun has a B.A. in Applied Arts from Ryerson University and a Master’s in Communications and Culture from Ryerson/York Universities.

LIDO PIMIENTA is a Toronto-based, Colombian-born musician, interdisciplinary artist, and curator. She has performed and exhibited her work around the world since 2002, exploring the politics of gender, race, motherhood, identity, and the construction of a Canadian landscape in the Latin American diaspora and vernacular. Pimienta has garnered multiple award nominations including a 2020 Latin Grammy nomination for Best Alternative Music Album and a 2021 Grammy nomination for Best Latin Rock, Urban, or Alternative Album.

YELAINE RODRIGUEZ was born and is based in the Bronx. She is an Afro-Dominican United Statesian artist, educator, curator, and cultural organizer. Rodriguez received her BFA in Fashion Design from Parsons School of Design, The New School and her MA in Latin American and Caribbean Studies and Museum Studies from New York University. Rodriguez conceptualizes wearable art, sculptures, and site-specific installations drawing connections between Black cultures in the Caribbean and the United States captured through photography and video documentation.

ABOUT THE CURATOR

TAMARA TOLEDO is a Chilean-born Toronto-based curator, scholar, and artist. Toledo has curated numerous exhibitions offering spaces, platforms, and opportunities to Latin American and diasporic artists for over a decade. Toledo has presented her work at various conferences in Montreal, Chicago, New York, Vancouver, and Toronto. Her writing has appeared in ARM Journal, C Magazine, Fuse, Canadian Art, and Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture, University of California Journal. Her practice often follows an interdisciplinary approach and touches on notions of memory and trauma, intersectional diasporic identities, issues of power and representation, and international artistic-cultural interaction. Toledo is currently the Director/Curator of Sur Gallery and is a PhD candidate in Art History and Visual Culture at York University.

Sur Gallery is Toronto’s first gallery space dedicated to the exhibition and critical engagement of contemporary Latin American and Latinx art in Canada and is a project of Latin American Canadian Art Projects-LACAP.

For information contact:
416-654-7787
info@surgallery.ca
www.surgallery.ca
www.lacap.ca
facebook.com/LACAParts
youtube.com/user/lacapcanada

Gallery Hours:
Thursday & Friday: 12:00 PM-6:00PM
Saturday: 11 AM-5 PM

Location:
100-39 Queens Quay East,
Toronto, ON
M5E OA5

Sur Gallery acknowledges the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council, The City of Toronto through section 37, and Ready2Post.