EVER ELSEWHERE: SITING A MENNONITE IMAGINARY

Amalie Atkins, Clint Neufeld, Corinna Wolff, Emily Neufeld, Kandis Friesen, Lois Klassen

Ever Elsewhere brings together the work of six contemporary Canadian artists of Mennonite heritage whose work shares a common interest in the experience of actual and imaginary borderlands, and how migration has shaped notions of identity and cultural belonging. Mennonites have long characterized themselves as a migrant people – existing in relation to stories, histories, and landscapes that are “ever elsewhere.” This exhibition explores issues of cultural nostalgia, the work of home-ing and rehome-ing, and the relationship between cultural migration and settler history in the land now called Canada.

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A KNIFE

Gallery 44 Online Exhibition

falling does not only mean falling apart, it can also mean a new certainty falling into place. Grappling with crumbling futures that propel us backwards onto an agonizing present, we may realize that the place we are falling toward is no longer grounded, nor is it stable. It promises no community, but a shifting formation.

Hito Steyerl

Fairy Tails (currently closed)

10 January to 1 April 2020
Vernissage: 17 January @ 7:00 pm

Works by Amalie Atkins, Aganetha Dyck, Diana Thorneycroft, Meryl McMaster, Sylvia Ptak, Vicky Sabourin, Anna Torma, Laura Vickerson, Janice Wright Cheney

Curated by Anne Koval

This group exhibition explores the wondrous in nature by reconsidering the role of animals in storytelling. These works present fantastical narratives in which animals preside over strange episodes: tales are rewritten or unwritten, travellers embark on uncertain journeys, danger lurks deep in the forest, a witch appears from nowhere, birds and beasts are spellbound, clothing is enchanted, and a shoe materializes, as if magically spun from gold. If animals are “good to think with,” as anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss once famously remarked, then folk and fairy tales have a long history of speaking through beasts, whose otherworldly transformations can express our innate or unconscious longings and desires.