Unsettling catalogue is now online

Unsettling

Texts by Ranu Basu, Elwood Jimmy, Shawn Micallef, and Bojana Videkanic
Documentation of work by Basil AlZeri, Lori Blondeau, Duorama (Paul Couillard & Ed Johnson), Terrance Houle, and Lisa Myers

The Unsettling catalogue is now online!

The catalogue is based on the exhibition Unsettling, curated by Bojana Videkanic and presented at the Doris McCarthy Gallery in the summer and fall of 2017, as well as Videkanic’s spring 2017 residency project Unsettled at Guild Park and Gardens, both involving artists Basil AlZeri, Lori Blondeau, Duorama (Paul Couillard & Ed Johnson), Terrance Houle, and Lisa Myers. Using these two projects as a starting point, the Unsettling catalogue features texts by Ranu Basu, Elwood Jimmy, Shawn Micallef, and Bojana Videkanic that explore the work of the artists and the cultural landscape of Scarborough, alongside exhibition and residency documentation; archival images of Guild Park and Gardens from the Breithaupt Hewetson Clark Collection, Special Collections & Archives, University of Waterloo Library; and photographs of Scarborough – past and present. Unsettling offers subtle and not so subtle gestures of reversal, of questioning, of disturbance, inviting readers to pause and think about the space and place they occupy.

Supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Toronto Arts Council, Jackman Humanities Institute, and U of T’s Affinity Partner TD Insurance.

Read the catalogue here or download here.

Design
Lauren Wickware

Photography
Ranu Basu
Henry Chan
Toni Hafkenscheid
Ken Jones
Alan Peng
Bojana Videkanic

Copy-editing
Stuart Ross

Imaging
Paul Jerinkitsch

Writer Biographies

Ranu Basu is Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at York University. Her research and teaching interests relate to the geographies of marginality, diversity, and social justice in cities; power, space, and activism; critical geographies of education; and spatial methodologies including critical GIS. Her projects have explored the impacts of the neo-liberalization of educational restructuring in Ontario; multiculturalism in schools through questions of “integration”; social sustainability and the meaning of public space as it relates to migrants; and the provision of infrastructure for marginal groups in suburban regions.

Elwood Jimmy is an avid learner, listener, collaborator, facilitator, writer, artist, cultural worker, and gardener based in Toronto. He is originally from the Thunderchild First Nation, a Nêhiyaw community in the global north that was forcibly displaced by the Canadian government to its current site. For many years, he has played a leadership role in several art projects, collectives, and organizations nationally and abroad. Through his many practices, he strives to co-design collaborative spaces and temporalities increasingly rooted in trauma-informed principles and methodologies, working to liquefy barriers to accessing art, community, learning, language, and the natural world.

Shawn Micallef is the author of Stroll: Psychogeographic Walking Tours of Toronto (2010), Full Frontal TO: Exploring Toronto’s Architectural Vernacular (2012), The Trouble with Brunch: Work, Class and the Pursuit of Leisure (2014), and Frontier City: Toronto on the Verge of Greatness (2017). He’s a weekly columnist at the Toronto Star, and a senior editor and co-owner of Spacing magazine. Micallef teaches civics at the University of Toronto and was a 2011–12 Canadian Journalism Fellow at Massey College. In 2002, while a resident at the Canadian Film Centre’s Media Lab, he co-founded [murmur], a location-based mobile-phone documentary project that spread to over twenty-five cities globally. In 2016, he hosted and co-wrote Accidental Parkland, a documentary on Toronto’s ravines.

Bojana Videkanic is a Yugoslav-born performance artist, curator, and art historian/theorist. After becoming a stateless person, Videkanic came to Canada, where she now resides. She is an Assistant Professor in Fine Arts at the University of Waterloo. She has exhibited nationally and internationally, and has curated exhibitions and festivals. Her academic research examines the history of modern art in socialist Yugoslavia. Videkanic is a recipient of a SSHRC Insight Development Grant for her curatorial research project (Un)settled, a SSHRC Connection Grant for This Could Be the Place, co-curated with Ivan Jurakic, as well as artist travel and visual arts project grants from the Canada Council for the Arts.

For more information, please contact DMG Exhibitions & Outreach Coordinator Erin Peck at erin.peck@utoronto.ca.

logos