Join us on Saturday, February 8th at 2pm, for the opening reception of Margins & Peripheries.
Check out our upcoming Creative Skill Sharing workshops HERE
&
Register for a FULL DAY Emergency First Aid course Tuesday, February 25th 9am - 5pm
limited spaces available
Summer Exhibition
July 11th - August 25th
[ as the tongue slips ]
- guest curator Alexander Rondeau
Aylan Couchie, Anyse Ducharme, Marc-Olivier Hamelin, Mishiikenh Kwe, Marc Ranger, Katya Serré
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July 11th - August 25th
Opening Reception Saturday, July 13th, 2 - 4pm
This exhibition is presented by The Fabulous Festival of Fringe Film,
in partnership with The Durham Art Gallery.
Note from Alexander Rondeau:
This exhibition is not about languages themselves, but rather their limitations, faults, and continued potential. Here, we are thinking about what happens between lines, ellipses, indentations, breaths, and margins. Each of the artists in this grouping are particularly attuned to the power structures that create imbalances between languages based on their cultural legacies and histories, and what that means to speak the way we do -- or don't -- today. In an exhibition setting, this means turning to the realm of the visual to look for cues that help us identify where language may falter, and subtly shift our engagements with something as quotidian as communication. It is entirely possible that some viewers may not be able to read some of the text prompts on display in English, French, or Nishnaabemwin, so it is important to remember that, here, honouring the artists' uses of languages and their attached identities avoids losing what and whom might otherwise be erased through translation.
To learn more about the Fabulous Festival of Fringe Film and see the 2024 schedule HERE or visit fabfilmfest.org
as the tongue slips
EN :
[as the tongue slips] uses queer and feminist frameworks to bring together six artists working through complex questions surrounding language and power structures therein in so-called Northeastern Ontario and Northwestern Québec, with sensibilities that are indeed uniquely Northern. Accordingly, the artists are working with questions of language preservation, translation and sometimes lack thereof, and identity in French, English, and Nishnaabemwin.
A tongue is a strange thing to consider in how identity is constructed, actualized, and performed, isn't it? We often hear the expression "mother tongue" to identify our dominant language (dominant language itself being a product of globalization and colonial systems of power, and the question of a mother tongue can often be othering or intended to marginalize); in French, "langue" means both language and tongue; we might highlight a mistake when speaking as "a slip of the tongue" thus imparting that our abilities to convey and express ourselves through language are fallible and slippery. Further, the tongue is often centre-stage in queer pleasure undermining patriarchal and heteronormative conceptions of sex and sexuality. In French, there exists numerous pejorative homophobic slurs, yet we continue to search for language to positively discuss queer identities outside of borrowing anglicized terms -- how do we determine when to produce new words, or when to borrow from another language?
A queer reading of the works in alors que la langue se glisse allows us to trouble normalized and standardized questions of expression and communication as an assertion of a better way of doing things. To use queerness as a prism through which to question language in a settler state -- which has sought to eradicate Indigenous languages -- allows us to expand horizons of possibility, and step out of binaried structures.
-- Alexander Rondeau
Cette exposition est présentée par le Fabulous Festival of Fringe Film.