June 5 to 27, 2009 | Opening: Friday June 5, 7 PM
Western Front Media Arts presents
What Moves Us
A group exhibition with works by
Aleesa Cohene
Terrance Houle and Trevor Freeman
Marilou Lemmens and Richard Ibghy
Jayce Salloum
Jin-me Yoon
Curated by Liz Park.
Referring both to motion and emotion, What Moves Us explores through five distinct video works our physical and social relationship to a world of rapidly moving images, goods, and bodies. Through interviews, performances, and video collages, the artists in this exhibition provide personal and intimate articulations of movement pointing to larger global politics of mobility that are informed by historical, political and economic factors. The exhibition explores various psychic states of being ungrounded and the featured works reference timely issues, such as the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, economic exploitation and development in Africa, and Canada’s immigration policy.
In today’s climate marked by state-encouraged fear of transient populations, the personal accounts the artists provide bring to the surface individual experiences that rarely emerge in discussions of global politics, especially in relation to issues of mobility. The featured works demonstrate how the movement of people reaches through space and time, and alters the geography of human relations.
This exhibition is the Vancouver premier of Jin-me Yoon’s 2003 video installation Unbidden, Marilou Lemmens and Richard Ibghy’s latest video work Mission to Kumasi, and Aleesa Cohene’s 2003 single-channel video All Right. Jayce Salloum presents part 3a: occupied territories and part 3b: (as if) beauty never ends… from his ongoing untitled series. Terrance Houle and Trevor Freeman have created a new video based on their 2008 performance series Portage.
Please join the artists and the curator at the Western Front for a free dim sum brunch and a conversation on Sunday June 7, 12 PM. Attendance is limited to the first 30 registrants. Please email mediaresident@gmail.com to register before Sunday May 31.
Western Front Media Arts gratefully acknowledges the support of Canada Council for the Arts, BC Arts Council, BC Gaming and City of Vancouver. Western Front Media Arts would like to specifically acknowledge the financial support for What Moves Us from Canada Council for the Arts Media Arts Dissemination Project Grant.
Liz Park gratefully acknowledges the support of Canada Council for the Arts through Assistance to Culturally Diverse Curators for Residencies in the Visual Arts. Liz graduated from the ahva CCST program in 2007. Marilou Lemmens graduated from the ahva MFA program in 2007.
Image: Marilou Lemmens and Richard Ibghy, Mission to Kumasi, video still, 2008. Single channel video. Image Courtesy the Artist
The Western Front
http://front.bc.ca/mediaarts/events/3272
