Curated by Alexandra Hartstone
Soheila Esfahani, Travis Shilling, Jordyn Stewart, Diana Thorneycroft
Exploring ideas of Canadiana and what it means to be Canadian through depictions of place, identity, and culture Portraits of Home presents the works of artists Soheila Esfahani, Travis Shilling, Jordyn Stewart, and Diana Thorneycroft. Comprised of photography, sculpture, painting, mixed media, and video these works, both together and individually, challenge viewers to engage with preconceptions around what defines being Canadian. From the pastiche landscapes of Diana Thorneycroft to the delicate installation of Soheila Esfahani’s porcelain birds, each artist speaks to aspects of identity, representation, culture, and landscape.
Doris McCarthy Gallery
University of Toronto Scarborough
The artists in Ornamental Gestures engage with and practice crafts as a means to connect to their heritage and push back against the way it has been historically represented. They reclaim their cultural traditions and embrace the creative practices that remain on the periphery of objects, spaces, and critical theory. The tangible manifestations of their cultures speak to a connectedness and longing for one’s ancestry through material object. The luminous works in the exhibition, painstakingly created by the artists, go beyond the notion of ornament to confront colonial and capitalistic mindsets. Through nuanced approaches to engaging with processes and materials that have been historically referenced as ornamental, they produce a new visual vernacular.
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Soheila would like to thank the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts for their generous support of her artistic practice.