MAY 1 - JUN 6
SANAZ MAZINANI: IRAN REVISITED
TORONTO IMAGE WORKS GALLERY
OPENING MAY 8, 6 - 8PM
Sanaz Mazinani’s colour diptychs and marquee photographs explore the physical landscape and human faces of contemporary Iran, her country of origin. Each image contains its own narrative qualities and together they create a complex portrait of the country. The recent history of Iran familiar to most outsiders begins with the Islamic Revolution, followed by the resulting social restrictions successive leaders have imposed on the country. This aspect of history is incomplete and offers only a narrow view of Iranian culture.
2009 marks the 30-year anniversary of the Islamic Revolution. Today more than half of Iran’s population is under the age of 25, and many among this new generation of Iranians are pushing against boundaries. Some fight against the clergy to hold on to their more liberal family traditions, while others fight against Western popular culture as they struggle to find their own identities. The photographs in this series give us a privileged glimpse of the everyday life in modern Iran. From painted portraits of young martyrs slowly peeling from the exterior walls of mosques, to a still life of the architectural remnants of the Persian Empire, these photographs depict the different ideologies that overlap in Iran’s contemporary landscape. Curated by Bonnie Rubenstein.
80 Spadina Ave, Ste 207
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MAY 1 - 31
MAGNUM PHOTOS: STATES OF CONFLICT
BRUNO BARBEY, THOMAS DWORZAK, STUART FRANKLIN, MAGNUM IN MOTION, SUSAN MEISELAS, LARRY TOWELL
CONTACT GALLERY
OPENING MAY 8, 7 - 10PM
Magnum Photos: States of Conflict examines some of the watershed moments of civic transformation over the last 40 years. Since 1948, Magnum photographers have been depicting conflict around the world, and the collective’s force reflects photography’s enduring power as a tool for change. The images in this exhibition reveal the intrepid persistence and unique personal vision of their makers.
Bruno Barbey, a Frenchman born in Morocco, captured the turbulence of the May 1968 student protests and general strikes in Paris that led to the collapse of French president Charles de Gaulle’s government. Barbey photographed the riots, occupations and street battles to communicate the urgency of this seminal point in time.
In 1979, American photographer Susan Meiselas documented the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua. Twenty-five years later, she returned to the region with murals of images she made during the insurrection and installed them in the public spaces where the photographs were originally taken. Meiselas’ photographs capture the sites of collective remembrance she created in her project Reframing History.
Twenty years after Beijing's Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, Englishman Stuart Franklin’s iconic images are symbols of defiance and aggression. Franklin’s celebrated photograph of the infamous man standing before advancing tanks is among the world’s most recognizable photographs. His images encapsulate the magnitude of an insurrection that shocked the world.
Canada’s Larry Towell shows black-and-white photographs that depict anger and fear, aggression and assault. Reminiscent of his images of conflict in the West Bank, these images were captured while dodging hurtling rocks and flying tear gas canisters. Perhaps surprisingly, they portray the police and RCMP riot police confronting demonstrators opposed to the expansion of the North American Free Trade Agreement in Quebec City, 2001.
Originally from Germany, Thomas Dworzak has documented the conflict in Chechnya, the crisis in Kosovo, the war in Macedonia and the revolutions in the former Soviet republics of Georgia, Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine, among many other tragic events. Unified by Dworzak’s finely tuned sense of colour, his photographs captured around the world possess an overwhelming ability to illuminate humanity in states of conflict.
As an extension of the focus on conflict through still images, a series of short documentary films by Magnum in Motion – from photographers' behind-the- scenes, first-hand accounts to thematic essays – further convey the global experiences of the agency’s members. Reflecting complex histories, all of the images in this exhibition inform the way we see our evolving world.
Thomas Dworzak's work is presented in association with the Goethe-Institut Toronto.
Image by Stuart Franklin, China, 1989
80 Spadina Ave
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MAY 8 - JUN 13
IN MAY (AFTER OCTOBER)
ANDREAS BUNTE (GERMANY), DUNCAN CAMPBELL (IRELAND/SCOTLAND), THEA DJORDJADZE (GEORGIA/GERMANY), MATIAS FALDBAKKEN (NORWAY), CLAIRE FONTAINE (FRANCE), LUCA FREI (SWITZERLAND/SWEDEN), CYPRIEN GAILLARD (FRANCE), LUIS JACOB (PERU/CANADA), PIA RONICKE (DENMARK), NORA SCHULTZ (GERMANY)
GALLERY TPW
OPENING MAY 8, 7 - 9PM
In May (After October) takes its title from two revolutionary moments in Western history: Russia’s October Revolution of 1917 and the French student protests of May 1968. It also makes reference to the social and political change that many people hope will be a result of the election of Barack Obama in the US. This widespread call for ongoing change provides a platform for us to consider the political efficacy of aesthetic practice. In particular, this exhibition focuses on photographic images, videos and films that share in common an interest in the articulation of a productive refusal. From virtual abstraction to appropriated archival images and experiments with narrative structure, this international group of artists moves beyond the creation of easily consumed or didactic artworks. Together their works raise questions, asking how we can find new ways to say “no” and formulate suggestions for political and aesthetic alternatives. Organized by Kathrin Meyer and Tim Saltarelli.
Image by Andreas Bunte, Still from O.T. (Wohung), 2006
56 Ossington Ave
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MAY 9 - JUN 6
JONATHAN TAGGART: SALT AND EARTH
RYERSON GALLERY
OPENING MAY 8, 6 - 9PM
Jonathan Taggart’s Salt and Earth (2008) offers an impressionistic portrait of Whole Village, a contemporary farming cooperative whose biodynamic practices offer an alternative to dominant agribusiness models. Revolutionary in their “off the grid” objectives, communal farms such as Whole Village rely on the pooling of member resources to achieve selfsufficiency. In a late-capitalist society, the collective’s lifestyle is exceptional in its means, aims and commitment to sustainability.
Shot from the hip and presented in rich black-and-white tones, this series depicts a community’s embrace of ancient farming practices, extraordinary in today’s short-term gain/hightech culture. Slow, hand-wrought and labor intensive, here everything old is new, echoed even in use of analogue photography. Sensual, close in, bathed at times in sparkling luminosity, at times in inky shadow, these scenes move us along with the cycle of the seasons. Simple acts and subtle tensions play out through the everyday lives of the community. Family-like, yet not just one family, the collective comes together and moves apart. In Salt and Earth, the members of the collective stand before us, quiet revolutionaries in the face of environmental peril, suggesting what may be a way forward. Katy McCormick
80 Spadina Ave., Ste 305
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MAY 8 - JUN 27
CLOSE DISTANCE: BECKY COMBER, DARREN HARVEY-REGAN, VIRGINIA MAK, ANDREA MIHAI, DARREN RIGO, CAROLINA SAQUEL
HARBOURFRONT CENTRE, MAIN GALLERY, YORK QUAY CENTRE
OPENING MAY 8, 6 - 10PM
Close Distance presents a contemporary photographic view on the human-altered landscape, bringing together a range of carefully constructed landscapes by local and international artists. While we have become familiar with images that capture our destruction of nature, the images in Close Distance foster a quiet revolution in our awareness. The artists’ camera-constructed landscapes prompt understanding of the power of the photographic still through use of such strategies as performance, compressed space, selective focus and abstraction. Curated by Lena Oehmsen.
Image by Darren Rigo, Displacement #17, 2009.
235 Queens Quay W
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MAY 8 - JUN 27
APRIL HICKOX: GATHER
HARBOURFRONT CENTRE - SERVICE CANADA WINDOW - YORK QUAY CENTRE
OPENING MAY 8, 6 - 10PM
Gather is a scanned archive of clusters of decaying balloons found on the beaches of Toronto Island. Markers of a symbolic life passage, balloons live on in April Hickox’s work as the forgotten detritus of social occasions reborn in the digital world.
235 Queens Quay W
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MAY 8 - JUN 27
JENNIFER LONG: SWALLOWING ICE
HARBOURFRONT CENTRE, PHOTO GALLERY, YORK QUAY CENTRE
OPENING MAY 8, 6 - 10PM
Swallowing Ice is a series of short videos and photographs that examines women’s anxieties surrounding the decision to have children. Reviving the form of the silhouette to depict motherhood and its contradictions, Jennifer Long makes powerful use of the format’s ability to reveal the universal in the individual.
235 Queens Quay W
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MAY 8 - JUN 27
PETER SIBBALD: ELEGY FOR A STOLEN LAND
HARBOURFRONT CENTRE, ARCHITECTURE SPACE, YORK QUAY CENTRE
OPENING MAY 8, 6 - 10PM
From his ancestral home in Southern Ontario, Peter Sibbald presents landscape as a nexus of human will and nature. Elegy for a Stolen Land depicts a place where politics, spirituality, environmental science, commerce, social justice and philosophy collide.
235 Queens Quay W
