ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

“…the archive represents the end of a certain kind ofcreative innocence, and the beginning of a new stage of self-consciousness, ofself-reflexivity in an artistic movement.” Stuart Hall 

Stuart Hall’s quote underscores the significance ofsituating this exhibition as a moment of self-reflection on the contributionsof Latin American diaspora media artists to Canadian media art histories. Thecontested terrain of both the terms “archive” and “diaspora” requires deeperconsideration since this exhibition asks what is the meaning behind makingthese two terms form a dialogue with one another. Diaspora Dialogues:Archiving the Familiar features contemporary artworks by Cecilia Araneda,Rosalina Libertad Cerritos, Amanda Gutiérrez, Soledad Fátima Muñoz, andGabriela Aceves Sepúlveda. All from the Latin American diaspora, these artistsapply a variety of critical and aesthetic approaches to archiving. In addition,the exhibition is in dialogue with a virtual screening of video art by womenartists from the 70s and 80s hosted on VIVO Media Arts Centre website entitled Women& Art: Political Praxes of Memory. This dialogue that has beenestablished between Latin American video artist pioneers from Brazil and Chileforegrounds the diaspora’s relationship with “original” culture, “copy”, and“archive”.

The syncretic nature of diaspora peoples and cultures, thedoubling of places, the passages and slippages between past and present, hereand there, mother tongues and adopted tongues, all foreground the fluidity andporousness of diaspora identities and ways of being as dialogic. Thisexhibition engages with (dis)articulations of the archive as syncretic throughformal and conceptual experimentations of master codes and narratives. Diasporaarchives interrupt racist nationalism and border enforcement ideologies bymaking visible histories of violence and interventionism in the Global Southall of which have created the conditions for being in diaspora in thesettler-nation-state, on stolen Indigenous lands, known as Canada.

Diaspora Dialogues opens an inquiry into howarchival memory can articulate diaspora histories, experiences, and knowledge.How does looking at these artworks that engage the archive produce acontemporary historical experience? What new possibilities does this exhibitionopen up as we engage with intergenerational Latin American and diaspora mediahistories and futures? The archive as a negotiable terrain linked to thecollective imaginary calls into question the absences, gaps, and silences of anarchive that is mediated by hierarchies and power structures. Colonization,patriarchy, white supremacy, racial capitalism have all shaped historicalnarratives, collective memory, and how we access and interpret information. Inthe field of media art, archival safeguarding and archeology continue to posevery practical problems of how to ensure the legacy of artworks that usedigital and analogue machines, computer languages, pixels, binary digits, andthe numeric codes used to mediate diasporic stories. 

The initial impulse for this exhibition is the result of adocumentary film project which dialogues with Latin American media art archivesthrough an intergenerational and feminist perspective. This exhibition intendsto follow its lead and establish an ongoing dialogue with Latin Americandiaspora women, working within the Canadian settler-nation-state, usingarchives as a strategy of inquiry and resistance. Through dialogicmeaning-making processes, these artworks highlight how our social, and politicalsituatedness in the world intersects with memory and power. The artworks in DiasporaDialogues make visible the living political memory of the diaspora throughdiverse media art languages, manifesting affective approaches to the archive asa site of interpretation, contestation, and negotiation. Here, the archive ispersonal, familiar, familial, political, gendered, fragmented, embodied, andliving. 

Diaspora Dialogues: Archiving the Familiar ultimatelyproduces a curatorial archive that aims to generate further dialogue on thesignificant contributions, knowledge production, and archival safeguarding ofdiaspora communities within and despite the nation state. It is important tohighlight how border regimes have been catalysts for the conditions ofmigration and diaspora within Canada. The hemispheric dialogues between Northand South speak to ongoing violent histories of Indigenous genocide, dispossession,occupation, and oppressive forms of government. Diaspora histories are thustied to the violence of borders with its walls and wars. The exhibition thuscreates dialogic mediations between the artists, their communities, and theirhistories, disrupting neoliberal national discourses of multiculturalism. Thearchive is gendered, racialized, and political; these artists are agentstelling and safeguarding their own diasporic histories through the language ofmedia art.  

Co-curated by Sarah Shamash and Tamara Toledo

Financially supported by the Toronto Friends of the VisualArts.

LOCATION

Sur Gallery Exhibition: 39 Queens Quay East, Suite 100

PROGRAMMING

Opening Reception:
Wednesday, October 4, 7-9pm
In-person Event at Sur Gallery

Curator Tour with Sarah Shamash:
Saturday, October 7, noon-1pm
In-person Event at Sur Gallery

Women & Art: Political Praxes of Memory
Virtual Screening of Video Art: Chile and Brazil of the 1970s-80s
October 21 to November 4, 2023

Artist Talk with Amanda Gutiérrez and Gabriela Aceves Sepúlveda:
Thursday, October 19th, 7-8pm
Online Event

Latin American Speakers Series: Presentation by Claudia Calirman
Feminist or Feminine?
Thursday, October 26, 7-9pm
Online Event

Artist Talk with Cecilia Araneda, Rosalina Libertad Cerritos, and Soledad Muñoz:
Thursday, November 9, 7-8pm
Online Event

Curator Tour with Tamara Toledo:
Saturday, November 25, noon-1pm
In-person Event at Sur Gallery

Gallery Hours (during exhibition):

Wednesday - Friday noon-6:00PM

Sat 11 AM-5 PM