Maya Ben David, Air Canada Gal (still from video), 2016
Amie Siegel, Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay, Bearbara, Maya Ben David, John Greyson
Curated by Lucas Cabral
Opening reception: June 7 at 7pm
Increased access to the equipment, technology, and education of production processes as enabled consumers to adapt products to suit their needs and styles.
The artists in this exhibition take up music as both material and language, engaging with the meaning it is embedded with through the context of its production and distribution. As subversive consumers, this group decontextualize the for-mass-produced to produce new and unique versions of relatable favourites.
These interruptions act as inflection, making space to feature the personal, and, in the process, highlight the gaps where music falls short.
Amie Siegel (New York City, New York)
Amie Siegel works variously between film, photography, performance and installation. Recent solo exhibitions include the South London Gallery; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Museum Villa Stuck, Munich; Audain Gallery, Simon Frasier University, Vancouver, B.C.; Kunstmuseum Stuttgart and the MAK, Vienna. The artist has participated in group exhibitions at Witte de With, Rotterdam; the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; Hayward Gallery, London; KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; CCA Wattis, San Francisco; MoMA PS1; MAXXI Museum, Rome; Swiss Institute, New York; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. Siegel’s work is in public collections including the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Tate Modern and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Her films have been screened at the Cannes, Berlin, Toronto and New York Film Festivals, The Museum of Modern Art, New York and The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. She has been a fellow of the DAAD Berliner-Künstlerprogramm and the Guggenheim Foundation, the Fulton Fellow at The Film Study Center at Harvard University, a recipient of the ICA Boston’s Foster Prize, Sundance Institute and Creative Capital Awards. She lives and works in New York City.
Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay (Edinburgh, Scotland)
Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay is an artist, diarist and correspondent. His artistic work mediates emotional encounters with musical, art historical and Queer cultural material, encouraging deep listening and empathic viewing.
In his work you will find bells, bouquets, enchanted forests, folding screens, gay elders, glitter, gold leaf, love letters, imaginary paintings, madrigals, megaphones, mirrors, naked men, sign language, sex-changing flowers, subtitles, and the voices of birds, boy sopranos, contraltos, countertenors and sirens. Nemerofsky’s work has been exhibited extensively across Canada and throughout Europe. He has undertaken artist residencies in Austria, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Poland and Sweden. His work is in the permanent collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, the Polin Museum for the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, Thielska Galleriet Stockholm and the National Gallery of Canada.
Bearbara
Bearbara is an 8-foot giant purple musical bear known for her educational pop songs for adult babies. In the past year she has blown up on the music scene and is about to begin her European tour.
John Greyson (Toronto, Ontario)
John Greyson is a prolific award-winning film- and video-maker who has achieved international recognition on the queer cinema and film festival circuits. His audacious films and videos experiment with form and genre, engage with explicitly gay subject matter, and provoke conversations about queer issues. Also a committed activist, Greyson received international attention in 2013 when he was detained without charge in Egypt for fifty days before being released. He is perhaps best known for the films Zero Patience (1993) and Lilies (1996), which won four Genie Awards, including Best Motion Picture. As a director for television, his credits include episodes for such series as Queer as Folk, Made In Canada (Best Director Gemini, 2002), Drop the Beat and Welcome to Paradox.
Maya Ben David (Toronto, Ontario)
Maya Ben David (MBD) is a Toronto-based Jewish-Iranian Anthropomorphic Airplane. Working in video, installation and performance, she creates worlds and characters that aid her ongoing exploration of anthropomorphism, cosplay and performative personas. Ben David presents the origin stories of her characters in the form of video and performance, and expands on them via her online presence. They often inhabit alternate universes accompanied by nostalgia, such as the worlds of Pokémon and Spiderman. In addition, Ben David also plays a character called MBD who is known for having multiple feuds with her many alter egos as well as the art world. Most infamously, MBD has ignited online feuds with artists such as Jon Rafman and Ajay Kurian.