Diane Hau Yu Wong (BC)
© Diane Hau Yu Wong, capsize // together: building collective futures, with Quentin Lindsay, 2021.
articule is pleased to collaborate on this exhibition project with the Montreal, Arts Interculturels (MAI) for the realization of the articule + MAI Joint Support Program for minority curators as part of the MAI's Alliance artist support program 2020-2021 and 2021-2022. This project is produced with support from the Government of Quebec and the City of Montreal as part of l'Entente sur le développement culturel de Montréal, and from the Canada Council for the Arts.
capsize // together: building collective futures looks for ways of working collectively to navigate through environmental devastation and structural inequality. The exhibition strives towards an equitable future through the different lenses of Futurism and the intersection of diverse knowledge and new technology to resist colonial structures of repression and suppression.
The speculative possibilities of Futurism in utopian world-building allow us to imagine the possibilities of an equitable and sustainable future for all. The exhibition will bring together a multiplicity of lived experiences and knowledge from different communities with the intention to build towards an equitable future as we question how we use new technologies and critically examine the possible downfall of technologies when it is solely in the hands of a selected few.
© 𝗘𝘅𝗵𝗶𝗯𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄 𝙘𝙖𝙥𝙨𝙞𝙯𝙚 // 𝙩𝙤𝙜𝙚𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙧: 𝙗𝙪𝙞𝙡𝙙𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙘𝙤𝙡𝙡𝙚𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙫𝙚 𝙛𝙪𝙩𝙪𝙧𝙚𝙨 𝗯𝘆 𝗗𝗶𝗮𝗻𝗲 𝗛𝗮𝘂 𝗬𝘂 𝗪𝗼𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝘁 𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗰𝘂𝗹𝗲, 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟮, 𝗽𝗵𝗼𝘁𝗼𝗴𝗿𝗮𝗽𝗵𝗲𝗱 𝗯𝘆 𝗚𝘂𝘆 𝗟'𝗛𝗲𝘂𝗿𝗲𝘂𝘅.
Devin Ronneberg (Kanaka Maoli, Uchinanchu, European) is a transdisciplinary artist raised, and based in Los Angeles, working between sculpture, sound, image-making, installation, programing, engineering, computational media, and artificial intelligence. His work is currently focused on the unseen implications of emergent technologies and artificial intelligence, information control and collection, and the radiation of invisible forces. Ronneberg’s work has most recently been exhibited at Chronus Art Center Shanghai, Experimenta 2021 Triennial, MoMA Doc Fortnight 2021, The MacKenzie Art Gallery, EFA Project Space, MoCNA, The Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, and is a Sundance Art of Practice 2021-22 and New Frontiers 2020 Fellow.
Premonitions
© Devin Ronneberg, 2022.
Premonitions is a series of deepfake video works by American artist Devin Ronneberg that investigate the politics and utility of an enhanced ability to generate believable fake realities. The works in this series leverage the predictive power of AI to use the past as a lens through which we can more clearly see the present. The work conflates the known dangers of the development, production, and deployment of nuclear technologies in the 20th century with the unseen consequences of the development and deployment of AI technologies in the 21st century. These creative approaches to AI utilization offer resistance to the unilateral profit-driven methodologies of extraction that guide the vast majority of AI deployment, research, and ethics, and serve as a mechanism for implication of those most responsible for the current and future values of AI systems.
Quentin VerCetty - is an award-winning visual griot, artivist and self-described "ever-growing interstellar tree". He is one of the world's leading Afrofuturist a-r-tographer coining the term "Sankofanology" and "Rastafuturism" and the founder of the Black Speculative Arts Movement Canada organization and co-editor of the first Canadian art book on Afrofuturism entitled "Cosmic Underground Northside: An Incantation of Black Canadian Speculative Discourse & Innerstandings". In 2021 he created Stepping Forward Into History, the Joshua Glover memorial monument, Toronto's first and currently, the only sculpture monument of a person of African descent. Also, he is the first visual artist to be commissioned by Carnegie Hall, creating a digital sculpture entitled AstroSankofa that pays homage to the different Afrofuturists women who have graced the concert venue's stage since its inception.
Through his work, Quentin VerCetty hopes to engage and inspire hearts and minds further to help make the world a better place not only for today but for many tomorrows to come.
The NuOnes WIll Save Us, 30-second silent animation
© Quentin VerCetty, 2022.
Inspired by Afrofuturistic quasi-extra-terrestrial caryatids sculpture made by Wengechi Mutu for the cascade of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and the work of collage artist Yung Yemi this artist piece reimagines and speculates the Montreal's Olympic Stadium repurposed as the future site of Canada's museum of history for African and Caribbean identifying Womxn along with trans and non-binary folks. The art piece features two digitally sculpted androgynous caryatids with the Wes African adinkra symbol duafe representing beauty and feminity and the other is the ankh, an ancient Kemet (Egypt and Sudan) symbol which embodies wisdom and prosperity. The art piece is a critical lens to the present while passively interrogating ways society can better represent and honour the numerous contributions of Black women in what is currently known as Canada.
Diasporic Futurisms is a collaborative curatorial team composed of Adrienne Matheuszik (she, her) and Vanessa Godden (they, them). This collaborative curatorial endeavor works to create space for marginalized and racialized people whose artworks are based in genres of diasporic futurisms. Matheuszik and Godden define diasporic futurisms as the presentation of alternative perspectives of the present, predictions of the future, and creative approaches to reimagining the past. Within the genre of diasporic futurisms, the destabilization of white-supremacy, colonization, and capitalism in relation to the lives of diasporic people are a primary concern. In diasporic futurisms, these concerns are materialized through the genres of Fantasy, Magical Realism, Science Fiction, Speculative Fiction, and related subgenres.
Adrienne Matheuszik (she, her) is a mixed Jamaican & settler-canadian interdisciplinary artist in Toronto. Adrienne has had unsupervised access to the internet since she was nine years old. Adrienne uses computers to make art — video, physical computing, creative coding & 3D design — which usually result in interactive installations, augmented reality, short film and video. Her work explores ideas of representation & identity online and IRL. She is interested in speculative futures and using sci-fi to examine the possibility of the post-colonial. Adrienne has an MFA from OCAD University from the Interdisciplinary Masters of Art Media and Design Graduate program (2019), and a BFA from University of Ottawa with a specialization in New Media Art (2014).
Vanessa Godden (they, them) is a queer Indo-Trinidadian and Euro-Canadian artist and academic based in Toronto, Canada. Godden has a PhD from the Victorian College of the Arts (2020), supported through the Melbourne International Research Scholarship and Melbourne International Fee Remission Scholarship. They received their MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design (2014) and BFA from the University of Houston (2012). Their artistic practice uses performative gestures to explore how personal histories of sexual assault, cultural heritage, and the body in relation to geographic space can be conveyed through material engagements with the body.
Galvanized Suns in Retrograde
Diasporic Futurisms, 2022.
Galvanized Suns in Retrograde is an animation and sound piece produced by Diasporic Futurisms' co-founders, Adrienne Matheuszik and Vanessa Godden. The video features an animated diasporic rest stop that stretches the expanse of time and space and is accompanied by a composition field recordings captured across Texas, Trinidad and Tobago, and Toronto. The sound in conversation with the animation's aesthetics examines ideas of how adjusting conceptions of temporality can leverage a different reality for diasporic experience.
Diane Hau Yu Wong (She/Her) is an emerging curator and art historian currently based on the traditional, ancestral, unceded territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Stó:lō and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam)Nation. She graduated with a BFA in Art History at Concordia University in 2018 and is currently a MA Candidate in the Critical Curatorial Studies Program at the University of British Columbia. Her curatorial practice and research are largely based on the intersection between community and Asian diasporic identity.
Her research interest includes the depiction of Asian bodies in speculative fiction and Asian Futurism and how it could be used to embrace diasporic identities and imagine possible futures for Asian-Canadian communities. She has curated exhibitions for Nuit Blanche in Montreal, Art Matters, and Centre A Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art.
Exhibition text
The logic of the stars confuses us
by Annik St-Arnaud
In the vitrine, three large scale photos give us a glimpse of the projects presented inside. The LED lights placed at the bottom of the gallery walls and in the vitrine create a link between the artworks presented inside the space. The light is soft and its purple color tints our perception and anchors us in a new space-time.
To our left, Devin Ronneberg's work, Premonitions, is projected and features a series of "deepfake" videos. The information conveyed blurs our understanding of what is true and what is manipulation, but the small "glitches" let us see the illusion. Humor and fear coexist in the presence of a familiar face that offers an apocalyptic rhetoric. A reflection on who really holds the power and its ability to influence and transform public opinion on major issues. We also question our capacity to be critical and to discern what is true in a world where information is created, modified and disseminated via multiple sources.
On the opposite wall, we can observe Quentin VerCetty's 3D animation, The NuOnes WIll Save Us, where meaning is created through details and symbolism. The animation features two persons posing in front of Montreal's Olympic Stadium, which becomes a place of representation for communities of African and Caribbean descent, as well as trans and non-binary communities. Through the details and postures of both individuals, the artist imagines a strong, resilient and liberated community. The hijacking of an iconic Montreal landmark such as the stadium, built during a period of great political, social and urban change, emphasizes the lack of inclusiveness and places of representation for the diverse communities of the Montreal diaspora.
The last project is located at the very back of the gallery, where a screen and headphones hang on the wall. We sit in one of the chairs available to the viewer and immerse ourselves in a virtual world created by the Diasporic Futurisms collective, consisting of artists Adrienne Matheuszik and Vanessa Godden. Galvanized Suns in Retrograde features a rest stop where various elements are familiar to us such as nature, its sounds and the architectural structures. However, the sounds come from distinct places. This amalgam reflects the diverse heritage of both artists and is used to create an alternative soundscape that cannot exist outside of this virtual world. The movement of the stars is fascinating and it transforms our relationship to time while we are immersed in this piece. A meditative work where the audience questions the idea of rest, its accessibility and how this speculative landscape came to be.
The exhibition capsize // together: building collective futures, curated by Diane Hau Yu Wong, highlights the ability of the diasporic collective to imagine numerous possible futures. The use of new technologies such as 3D animation and artificial intelligence become tools to question and claim the right to be included and represented in decisions made that will impact our future. An exhibition that is in line with the curator's intent to research and highlight the practices of artists from the diaspora and their realities, both lived and envisioned.
Associated event
Artist Talk
capsize // together: building collective futures