The exhibition titled How to Make Space, curated by Jennifer L. Davis (MArch 2011) and Su-Ying Lee (MVS 2011) featuring work by Tings Chak (MArch 2014), has received a 2016 Grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. The exhibition explores temporary structures built by women in Hong Kong as gestures of female spatial agency. Other artists featured in the exhibition include Stephanie Comilang, Devora Neumark, and Rowena Yin-Fan Chan.

From the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts website:

How to Make Space is an exhibition that frames the temporary architectures built by Hong Kong's population of female migrant domestic workers (MDWs) as gestures of female spatial agency. Three commissioned projects reveal the oppressive legal and cultural forces that compel the women to occupy public spaces and build structures of provisional materials in which to spend their Sundays off from work. The projects are researched and authored by artists Stephanie Comilang (Toronto/Berlin), Tings Chak (Toronto), and Devora Neumark (Montreal) with Rowena Yin-Fan Chan (Hong Kong). By presenting these works in an accessible and unconventional setting, the exhibition heightens awareness in a broad audience and directly engages the spaces and people with which it is concerned. Together, the projects point toward the possibility of a feminist architecture by striving to employ tactics learned from the MDWs, questioning existing disciplinary and social power structures, and developing new methodologies of How to Make Space.

How to Make Space is one of the projects organized by Davis and Lee under the name of Rear View (Projects). Both a curatorial collective and an itinerant site for art, Rear View (Projects) experiments with unconventional platforms to mobilize new interactions between art, place, and audiences. Recent exhibitions include Flipping Properties (2014), a large-scale installation commissioned for a Toronto Laneway designed by architect Jimenez Lai (HBA 2002, MArch 2007) with Bureau Spectacular.

How to Make Space will be on display from June 25 to July 23, 2016 in Hong Kong, China. For more information, visit rearviewprojects.com

The work of Assistant Professor Ed Pien has been included in the upcoming exhibition titled On Your Mark II at the Varley Art Gallery, in Markham. The exhibition is a study of the products and processes of mark making. From both a historic and contemporary perspective, the exhibition explores how artists use marks as both a means to an end, and as ends in themselves. Other artists included in the exhibition are F.H. Varley and Kate Wilson.

On Sunday, May 29th at 1 PM, Ed Pien will give an artist talk about the On Your Mark II exhibition at the Varley Art Gallery. The talk will be followed by an opening reception. For more information, visit www.markham.ca/VarleyArtGallery/UpcomingExhibitions

Ed Pien is also featured in CAFKA.16, a biennial exhibition of contemporary art in the public spaces of the City of Kitchener and across the Region of Waterloo. Ed Pien's work will be among installations, interventions, performances and projections by Acapulco, Jaime Angelopolous, Claire Ashley, Lisa Birke, Paul Chartrand, DodoLab, Meghan Harder, David Jensenius, Scenocosme, Jimmy Limit, Mary Ma, MAW Collective, and Jamelie Hassan. The exhibition opens Saturday, May 28 at 7 PM with a reception at Kitchener City Hall. For more information, visit www.cafka.org

Ed Pien is a Canadian artist based in Toronto. He holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from York University in Toronto and Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Western Ontario, in London, Ontario. Ed Pien has exhibited nationally and internationally including at the Drawing Centre, New York; La Biennale de Montreal 2000 and 2002; W139, Amsterdam; Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver; Middlesbrough Art Gallery, the UK; Centro Nacional e las Artes, Mexico City; The Contemporary Art Museum in Monterrey, Mexico; the Goethe Institute, Berlin; Bluecoat, Liverpool; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; as well as the National Art Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.

Assistant Professor Charles Stankievech, director of the Daniels Faculty's Visual Studies program, has been short-listed for the 2016 Sobey Art Award.

From the Sobey Art Award Juror’s Statement given by Barbara Fischer:

“Charles Stankievech is an internationally recognized artist whose award-winning exhibitions include Counterintelligence (2014) and Monument as Ruin (2015). He often refers to his interests as “fieldwork” – a temporary form of architectural installation that combines a diverse array of physical and immaterial elements, from photography to film, light and sonic materials, as well as writings, archival documents and works by other artists. Concerned with the transformation of the physical landscape and immaterial spaces as effected by military, industrial and colonial interests, and the history of technology, his work manifests ambitious and intensely rich essays on contemporary social and technological upheaval.”

The Sobey Art Award is an annual art prize given to Canadian artists under the age of 40. It distributes $100,000 among the finalists: $50,000 to the winner, $10,000 to each of the four finalists, and $500 each to other long-listed artists. Last year, Abbas Akhavan took home the award for his work on the “domestic sphere, as a forked space between hospitality and hostility,” and his more recent work on “spaces and species just outside the home – the garden, the backyard, and other domesticated landscapes.”

Stankievech is joined by four other finalists, representing different Canadian regions: Jeremy Shaw, Brenda Draney, Hajra Waheed, and William Robinson.

“The jury chose five artists whose approaches are characteristic of the frequently transdisciplinary practice of the upcoming generation of artists,” writes Nicolaus Schafhausen, International Juror for the Sobey Art Award. “They all reflect the broad intellectual spectrum of the Canadian art world.”

The winner of the Sobey Art Award will be announced later this year. A group exhibition showcasing the work of the winner and four finalists will be presented at the National Gallery of Canada from October 6, 2016 to February 5, 2017.

Photo: Monument as Ruin (2011-2014), Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen’s University. Photo by Charles Stankievech.

Related:

• #ReadingList: 4 essays and 2 books on colonialism and sovereignty
• Charles Stankievech named the Audain Distinguished Artist-in-Residance for Spring/Summer 2016
• Charles Stankievech Wins Best Solo Exhibition at OAAG Awards
• Charles Stankievech looks at art, photography, and culture "Through Post-Atomic Eyes"

Today, the Daniels Faculty’s graduating students will participate in the historic procession across King’s College Circle, where they will receive their diploma. As the Class of 2016 begins this new chapter in their lives, we asked alumni across all of our programs for some words of wisdom.

Here are 12 pieces of advice from #DanielsAlum.

1.

Experience working in different sizes of firms — each with a different office culture — and do a range of different types of buildings. All the while keep asking yourself: Is this the type of work I want to contribute to our civic culture and is this the right environment for me to do my best work? — Janna Levitt, Bachelor of Architecture, 1986

2.

Don't take everyone's advice. Consider what's relevant, and learn to be a good sieve.

Don't be afraid to bring who you are into your practice. Your quirks, your habits, your unrelated talents and obsessions: let the seemingly irrelevant engage with your work. It's the deviations that are deeply interesting and contribute to a better and more human design approach. — Denise Pinto, Master of Landscape Architecture 2011

3.

Write an introduction about a future version of yourself. Leave no reservations based on practical concerns, but only your most ideal state of being. Print it out, and read it. This activity will offer you a raw future you can now begin to edit. 

Make as many allies as you can, and be kind to people who are kind to you. Be honest about your opinions — when you choose to "behave well" and conceal your thoughts, this "well-managed" relationship will never be a close connection. 

You signed up to do architecture. Be an expert of it, and be good at everything else. — Jimenez Lai, Master of Architecture, 2007

4.

Early work experience is very special, it provides the framework for your professional career. Look for employment that offers a broad range of opportunities. Seek out ways to engage in what you are passionate about, it really matters that your work is challenging. — Eha Naylor, Bachelor of Landscape Architecture, 1980

5.

Stay close to your cohort and your faculty. Take time to work on all the projects you put aside. Make new work, the projects that you believed in and never realized, disseminate them, seek funding and remember to have fun along the way. Take each rejection as a sign for motivation. — Ali El-Darsa, Master of Visual Studies (Studio), 2015

6.

Travel. See what other cities are doing in urban design, landscape, gardens, architecture, public art, cultural programming, festivals. See art. Work in other parts of the world. Blur boundaries. — Victoria Taylor, Master of Landscape Architecture 2008

7.

Look for ways to continue exploring ideas from your thesis or final studio project - whether it is finding a job in an office that does similar work, collaborating with like-minded colleagues, attending conferences, or joining special interest groups  - your thesis can give your career a sense of direction moving forward. — Duncan Sabiston, Master of Architecture, 2014

8.

My friend and filmmaker Atom Egoyan recently had a simple inspirational message for students at Trinity College as they prepared to embark on their working lives. “Be what you want to become.”

I think the message applies to us all at every stage of life and it is especially relevant for young architects who will succeed in a competitive and challenging field with an independent, creative spirit and a strong sense of purpose. — Anne McIlroy, Bachelor of Architecture, 1986

9.

Enthusiasm and desire. While you're on the job and in everything you do in life... give it everything you have. — Shaimaa Atef, Master of Urban Design 2015

10.
Photo credit: Ruth Maria Murphy

Don't underestimate the value of mentorship both within and outside of the office. There is a lot to learn, so it's important to have a good support system while remaining patient and enthusiastic along the way. — Sonia Ramundi, Master of Architecture, 2012

11.

Learn to trust your intuition.

Substance over Style.

— Claude Cormier, Bachelor of Landscape Architecture, 1986

12.

Dare to Configure - Oser Configurer!

Every Building Implies a City.

— Bruce Kuwabara, Bachelor of Architecture 1972

Do you have advice you’d like to share with our graduating class? Post your words of wisdom on Twitter and Instagram and tag with #Adviceforgrads.

Here are some resources for students joining the Daniels Faculty's alumni community today: 

• 9 ways to stay connected after graduation
• Daniels Faculty alumni page
• U of T's alumni services website

Instructor and MVS Alumnus Joshua Thorpe (MVS 2009) recently released a book titled The Unexpected with Emily Smit-Dicks. The book was published by the Swimmers Group, a Toronto-based, international, cross-disciplinary, art and literature publication studio.

From the Swimmers Group publication release:

“By turns humorous and delicate, nostalgic and blunt, The Unexpected turns away from the clamour of current affairs to tell a story of love in a hundred pages of slowly unfolding scenes in melancholy and joy.

Somewhere between flash fiction, poetry, and picture book, The Unexpected is short and descriptive, rhythmic and melodic, and visits topics as diverse as rain and wind, sumac and pine… and birds that ‘make dirt on men and women’s heads.’

The images, some quickly scrawled in ink, others more carefully daubed in wash, show us foxes, feet, and streetlights at night. Scenes, it almost seems, from some storyboard of dreams, dreamt at the edge of sleep.“

This is not the duo’s first project together. Last year Thorpe and Smit-Dicks created an installment for the Howard Park Institute located in Toronto. For the month of February, their poem was displayed on the “Howard Park Institute Window”.

The Unexpected officially launches Thursday, March 10 at the G Gallery in Toronto. Visitors should enter on Foxley Pl., just north of Argyle Street. The event runs from 7 pm to 9 pm. There will be a $15 cover charge.

Every year, artists, curators, theorists and visual communicators speak at the Daniels Faculty as part of the Master of Visual Studies (MVS) Proseminar Series. Assistant Professor Charles Stankievech, Director of the Faculty’s Visual Studies Program, organizes the lineup of speakers for the winter semester. This year’s theme revolves around the idea of colonialism and sovereignty.

Zoe Todd, an anthropologist who studies human-animal relations, colonialism and environmental change in northern Canada, will present the next lecture in the series on Monday, March 14, 2016.

We asked Charles to compile a list of readings he thinks would complement, and expand upon, this year’s MVS Proseminar Series theme. Here are his picks:

This year, the 2016 Winter MVS Proseminar Series focuses on the potentials and problematics of Sovereignty and Colonization: both internationally and locally. The talks range from questions of decolonization through independence to the politics of monuments. Questions of exhibition display are intertwined with expanded notions of agency that include the post-human. The following list of readings is a sample of the amazing writings by our visiting lecturers and ally theorists.

1. “The Golden Potlatch: Study in Mimesis and Capitalist Desire” by Candice Hopkins

Candice presented the second talk in the series on February 10, 2016. The lecture, entitled “They paid their sentences with the removal of their feet: An indigenous response to conquistador monuments and the conquest of New Spain,” addressed the defacement of colonial monuments as an intervention into the status quo of suppressing our violent histories. Watch the entire lecture on the Daniels Faculty Youtube channel.

Her essay, “The Golden Potlatch: Study in Mimesis and Capitalist Desire” — examining potlatch, capitalistic economy and the public festival — is a good primer to her contemporary research into the politics of non-western display of art and artifacts.

2. “Indigenizing the Anthropocene” by Zoe Todd
(Page 255 in the book Art and the Anthropocene: Encounters Among Aesthetics, Politics, Environments and Epistemologies)

Zoe Todd will present the third lecture in the series, “Fish pluralities, refraction and decolonization in amiskwaciwâskahikan” on Monday, March 14, 2016.  She is an anthropologist researching fish, colonialism and legal-governance relations between Indigenous peoples and the Canadian government. 

She wrote an interesting essay last year that has been making the rounds called “Indigenizing the Anthropocene”, which in a way complicates an excellent earlier online text “An Indigenous Feminist’s take on the Ontological Turn: ‘ontology’ is just another word for colonialism.”

3. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples by Linda Tuhiwai Smith

Linda’s book, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, is required reading in all of the classes I teach at the University of Toronto. Until we make a course on Indigenous Studies mandatory at the school, this is a good place to start. Even just reading the introduction is an important first step to acknowledge the bias built into our current knowledge production methodologies.

4. “Crossing the Shatter Zone” by Bonnie Devine
(Essay in the book Border Cultures, available at the Art Gallery of Windsor)

Local artist and educator Bonnie Devine actually recommended Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s book to me. Bonnie wrote a great experimental text this past year that tells the history of the Great Lakes titled “Crossing the Shatter Zone.”

“Crossing the Shatter Zone” was included in the exhibition catalogue Border Cultures, which had its launch as part of our Fall Proseminar series with curator Srimoyee Mitra. The catalogue features the work of the many artists and authors who participated in a three-part exhibition at the Art Gallery of Windsor.

The AGW currently has an amazing exhibition by Wafaa Bilal reflecting on the destroyed library at the University of Baghdad.

5. “Postmodern Ambush” by Lucy R. Lippard

Lucy R. Lippard has been a long-standing key figure in feminist art. Her recent shift from valuing Land Art — which made her famous in the 1960s — toward the politics of Land Use is an important temperature gauge of the urgency of the times. 

She wrote a great essay last year about the collective PostCommodity in Afterall Journal. In Lippard’s words, PostCommodity are “part of a generational vanguard of Native artists that has refused to be ghettoised or confined to identity politics or traditional mediums.”

(Full disclosure: Starting in April, Afterall will be co-published by the Daniels Faculty)

You can buy Afterall at my favorite bookstore in Toronto, Type, or you can download the essay via your academic account.

6. Água Viva by Clarice Lispector

Clarice’s Água Viva is another one of those books that somehow slips into every reading list that I pull together. She replaced Pynchon as my Muse years ago and I can’t say much other than just read her. Água Viva, while one of her more unknown books, captivated me on the first page and I keep reading it like a Book of Hours:  “These instants passing through the air I breathe: in fireworks they explode silently in space.”

Água Viva is published in English by New Directions Press. Type usually has a few in stock as not a week or so goes by without me recommending or giving the book to someone.

More #ReadingLists:

• 3 books to read over the holidays, with Brian Boigon, Director of the Daniesl Faculty Undergraduate program 

Last September, sessional lecturer Rodney LaTourelle launched an exhibit titled The Stepped Form at the Mackenzie Art Gallery in Regina. The exhibit consists of a series of platforms ranging in material and colour, which are periodically rearranged by the gallery staff. Visitors are allowed to touch the artwork. Since its opening, the exhibit and LaTourelle have received significant press coverage.

“Students can be seen sitting and socializing — and even drinking beer during the opening — on the art work’s tiered steps,” writes Gregory Beatty for Prairie Dog Magazine who attended the first instance of the exhibit at the Illingworth Kerr Gallery in Calgary.

Last week, New Dance Horizons responded to LaTourelle's installation at the Mackenzie Art Gallery by inviting guests to use the space as a backdrop for song, sound, and motion. Guest artists included Neal Adolph, Stacy Allan, Jon Fearnside, Brady Frank, Arthur Jack, Adelle Johnson, Janelle Johnston, Kelsey Kuz and Jeanette Wiens and Sbot N Wo, Helen Pridmore & WL Altman, Krista Solheim, Johanna Bundon, and others.

More recently, LaTourelle was interviewed about The Stepped Form for the National Gallery of Canada Magazine. The article reflects on the exhibit, LaTourelle's experiences of public space, and how this has affected his work.

“'Trust in people' is a theme that seems to run throughout LaTourelle’s own work,” writes Lisa Hunter. “There’s something extra-satisfying about art with which we can interact. Surely we light up more parts of our brains when we use multiple senses to experience art.”  

On March 17, Visual Studies grad student Elisa Julia Gilmour took over the Daniels Faculty Instagram page as she made the final preparations for the Master of Visual Studies studio program graduating exhibition. The exhibition, which also features the work of fellow MVS students Gillian Dykeman, Daniel Joyce and Fraser McCallum, opens Friday, March 18 and runs until April 9 at the University of Toronto Art Centre.

Check out all of Elisa's photos below — and search #DanielsTakeover on Instagram to view past Day in the Life submissions.

Morning sunshines! Elisa Julia Gilmour over hither, representing all of the soon to be MASTERS of VISUAL STUDIES. I'll be taking over all day as we prepare for our thesis exhibition opening tomorrow 6-8pm at the Art Museum at the University of Toronto. Stay tuned ya'll. #dayinthelife #instatakeover #studentlife #danielstakeover #danielsfaculty #uoft

A photo posted by @uoftdaniels on Mar 17, 2016 at 6:01am PDT

Fraser McCallum's 3D prints #danielsfaculty #uoft #danielstakeover #studentlife #instatakeover

A photo posted by @uoftdaniels on Mar 17, 2016 at 7:07am PDT

Fraser McCallum's booklets #instatakeover #studentlife #danielstakeover #uoft #danielsfaculty

A photo posted by @uoftdaniels on Mar 17, 2016 at 10:38am PDT

Gillian Dykeman's crystal #danielsfaculty #uoft #danielstakeover #studentlife #instatakeover

A photo posted by @uoftdaniels on Mar 17, 2016 at 10:43am PDT

Dan Joyce's fountains #instatakeover #studentlife #danielstakeover #uoft #danielsfaculty

A photo posted by @uoftdaniels on Mar 17, 2016 at 3:43pm PDT

Dan Joyce's frog #danielsfaculty #uoft #danielstakeover #studentlife #instatakeover

A photo posted by @uoftdaniels on Mar 17, 2016 at 3:46pm PDT

Gillian Dykeman's studio floor #instatakeover #studentlife #danielstakeover #uoft #danielsfaculty

A photo posted by @uoftdaniels on Mar 17, 2016 at 4:33pm PDT

Elisa Julia Gilmour's paint job #danielsfaculty #uoft #danielstakeover #studentlife #instatakeover

A photo posted by @uoftdaniels on Mar 17, 2016 at 4:37pm PDT

See other Daniels Faculty Instagram Takeovers:

• Day in the Life: AVSSU takes over New York
• Day in the Life: Follow grad student Alistair Grierson as he prepares for his thesis review
• Day in the Life: Lecturer Jay Pooley documents Faculty life in an Instatakeover
• Day in the Life: Undergrad student Mendy Lu takes over the Daniels Faculty's Instagram page
• Day(s) in the Li(ves): Grad students Elise Hunchuck and Vanessa Abram take over Daniels Faculty Instagram account from Japan
• Day in the Life: Master of Landscape Architecture thesis student Shelley Long takes over the Daniels Faculty Instagram page
• Day in the Life: Visual studies and architecture undergrad Julia Gasenzer takes over the Daniels Faculty Instagram page
• Day in the Life: Recent MArch grad Emma Dunn takes over our Instagram page for the weekend

• Day in the Life: We hand over our Instagram keys to undergrad student Josie Northern Harrison

Assistant Professor Charles Stankievech, director of the Daniels Faculty's Visual Studies program, has been awarded the prestigious Audain Distinguished Artist-in-Residance program for Spring/Summer 2016.

The mandate of the residency is to bring renowned contemporary artists to Vancouver and to support the creation of new works. This week, Stankievech gave a public lecture in Vancouver titled "CounterIntelligence: A Glossary of Doubled Agency." His work addresses the way artefacts of warfare have helped us understand culture in conflict and the meanings they have when placed in the context of museum or art exhibition. It asks the question: what is the contemporary role of the exhibition as caught in the no-man's land between the didacic museum and the conceptual gesture?

On April 2, Stankievech will be speaking at the first annual Translations Symposium at The University of Waterloo School of Architecture. This year's symposium, Representing Ambience Today, will investigate contemporary representations of architecture's milieu. Stankievech will be part of the panel discussion titled "Atmospheres - the ambience of matter," which will explore the physical characteristics as well as the social and cultural characteristics of materiality in contemporary architectural investigations.

Join Shift Magazine in celebrating the launch of this year's publication. SHIFT16 showcases student work created by Architecture and Visual Studies undergraduates. The third issue focuses on reactions: emotional responses and physical impulses generated from images/representations/symbols have been combined to create the collection of student work featured in the magazine. 

The official launch will be held Saturday, April 16th in the lobby of the Daniels Faculty building (230 College Street) from 3PM to 5PM. Refreshments and free copies of SHIFT16 will be provided. An afterparty will also be held at 10PM in Kensington Market. The exact location will be announced on the Facebook event page closer to the date: https://www.facebook.com/events/1722101428070055/

Shift Magazine is the annual undergraduate publication of the John H. Daniels School of Architecture, Landscape, & Design at the University of Toronto.

List of Contributors to SHIFT16:
Lindsay Wu
Tawny Stoiber
Josh Silver
Rupa Morzaria
Valerie Marshall
Abby Yu 
Bo Zhang 
Kathy Zhong
Danni Zhang
Alexandra Kalman
Charlene Lo
Aisha Ali
Sebastian Lopez
Tala Alatassi
Megan Tan
Marienka Bishop-Kovac
Jessie Ji Huang
Lindsay Wu
Vincent Yung
Andrew Keung
Sunny Kim

Editorial Team:
Alexia Hovis, Editor In Chief
Najia Fatima, Editor
Emily Suchy, Editor
Valerie Marshall, Architecture Editor
Phat Le, Editor
Ashita Parekh, Editor
Abby Yu, Layout Designer
Josie Northern, Layout Designer
Isaac Seah, Website Designer
Jayvee Doroteo, Website Designer
Monique Lizardo, Communications Rep.
Gianina Ramos, Communications Rep.