Opening Reception & Performance:
Thursday May 4, 6 pm – 8 pm
Exhibition: April 20 – May 27
Gallery Hours: Tuesday & Wednesday: 10 am – 2:30 pm, Thursday & Friday: 12 – 6 pm, Saturday: 11 am – 5 pm
Sur Gallery, 39 Queens Quay East, Suite 100
Sur Gallery is Toronto’s first gallery dedicated to the implementation of art projects, which showcase and promote contemporary Latin American practices. A project of Latin American-Canadian Art Projects, Sur is envisioned as a platform of innovative ways to interpret and showcase Latin American art, and opportunities for audiences to understand its relevance in today’s global context. Strike A Chord resonates with Mayworks’ artistic vision and this year’s theme in its insistence on the activist role of art and its call on artists to produce meanings in times of injustice and uneasiness.
Join us for the opening reception with artist talks and a performance at Sur Gallery on May 4.
Curatorial statement By Tamara Toledo
To ‘strike a chord’ is to create or trigger an emotional negative or positive response to an action. In this exhibition, artists respond to times of peril by presenting scenarios of violence, responding with the action of protest and healing while conjuring an atmosphere of resistance. At times when our role as citizens seem to ever more bluntly demonstrate that actions need to be taken in order for there to be change, Montreal-based artist Claudia Bernal, Toronto-based artists Coco Guzman, Julieta Maria and David Salazar, use performance, video, installation, sculpture and drawing to position themselves as activists in a society that has revealed its ultra-right wing ideology.
Artists in Strike a Chord present multiple perspectives and offer the possibility of change through the use of various tools to activate social integrity, social justice, and respect. While both Claudia Bernal and Coco Guzman tackle performance and drawing as change catalysts and see the power of individuals capable of redefining the course of history, David Salazar exposes the vulnerability we all share and the obstacle that blocks our paths exposing our precarious lives. Julieta Maria takes us home, a comforting and nurturing encounter with our mothers, exposing our true nature to survive despite sentiments of fear and isolation lingering in the world today. During times of uncertainty and anxiety, it is artists who create meaning and a sense of purpose when all else seems to be crumbling. Artists raise their voices; they elicit and provoke those who do not want to change.
Co-presented with aluCine Latin Film + Media Arts Festival
Although all Mayworks 2017 events are FREE, we request that you obtain a ticket to the event to guarantee a seat via Eventbrite: http://mayworks.eventbrite.ca/
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