Winter 2018 exhibition season

This Winter 2018 Season at The Power Plant, see exhibitions by artists from different global regions as they draw connections from their own histories, to urgent matters and themes pertinent to Canada’s current social and political landscape.

Kader Attia
The Field of Emotion

Curator: Carolin Köchling, Curator of Exhibitions
Assistant Curator: Nabila Abdel Nabi, Assistant Curator

In The Field of Emotion, Kader Attia continues to deepen the notion of repair as both a physical and symbolic act. In this context, repair does not mean to fix things in order to restore them to their original state. On the contrary, Attia’s works point to the fact that wounds and injuries of the past never disappear: they seek repair endlessly.

Attia’s first Canadian solo exhibition brings together recent and newly commissioned works that confront us with the traumas of the past and their spectres in the present. Works on view include J’accuse [I accuse] (2016). Inspired by the injury and disfigurement of soldiers during World War I, the installation consists of roughly-hewn wooden busts of wounded soldiers, facing the eponymous anti-war film by Abel Gance. Originally made in 1919, the film was reshot in 1938, featuring footage of these veterans, as a warning against the looming threat of war. Attia’s film Reflecting Memory (2016) takes up the subject of the phantom limb, drawing a link between a lost part of the body and a lost part of society through trauma. Featuring interviews with surgeons, neurologists, psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, historians, musicians and a dancer, the film explores the underlying causes of psychological pain that manifests physically. The Field of Emotion furthermore includes a newly commissioned installation of railway ties that recall the traumas brought about by railways around the globe, as well as a film installation. The film essay brings together voices from the fields of psychiatry, anthropology, musicology, history and art history that speak to Canada’s history of colonization and slavery, and the impact that these wounds, and their denial, have on the individual and collective body.

This exhibition will travel to the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati from June 8–September 9, 2018.

Emeka Ogboh
The Song of the Germans 

Curator: Nabila Abdel Nabi, Assistant Curator

Emeka Ogboh explores conditions of listening and sound as a medium of intervention and knowledge exchange. Through his audio installations, he considers how personal and collective memories are encoded in sonority and how sound provides a context in which to ask critical questions around immigration, globalization and post-colonialism.

For Ogboh’s first exhibition in Canada, The Power Plant presents the ten-channel sound installation The Song of the Germans (Deutschlandlied) (2015). The installation features the recorded voices of African immigrants to Germany singing the German national anthem in their native languages, including Igbo, Yoruba, Bamoun, More, Twi, Ewondo, Sango, Douala, Kikongo and Lingala. Each voice is projected through an individual speaker, placed at the height of the singer, so that the viewer experiences every voice singularly and as part of a united polyphonic choral effect. By engaging African immigrants to Germany to sing the “Deutschlandlied,” Ogboh raises questions of national identity and the changing face of Germany. At its original presentation at 2015’s Venice Biennale, the installation was prescient of comparable political tensions in France, the United Kingdom, the United States and elsewhere. The work addresses forms of belonging and the realities of access and acceptance in a seemingly globalized world. In a time when one’s accent or dialect can be cause for denial of asylum, the artist orients our attention to the voices of those who have been marginalized.

As part of the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival, Ogboh will also present ”WER HAT ANGST VOR SCHWARZ: Casino Baden-Baden series” (2017) on The Power Plant’s south façade.

Michael Landy
DEMONSTRATION 

Curator: Nabila Abdel Nabi, Assistant Curator

Michael Landy’s practice explores attitudes toward materialism, consumption and the cultural value of objects. He is known for his large-scale commissions including Semi-detached (2004), an exact 1:1 replica of his parent’s home, and Break Down (2001), the systematic destruction of each and every one of his personal belongings. The work was a monumental emptying of the artist’s material possessions as a critique of consumerism.

Landy’s process-based approach continues in his installation at The Power Plant, the artist’s first exhibition in Canada and the third edition of the gallery’s Fleck Clerestory Commission Program. Through an open call distributed to the public, DEMONSTRATION aims to create a bridge of communication for the urgent voices of today and multiplicity of narratives and histories that define Canada. The artist invites the public to participate in the installation by submitting images, symbols, texts and slogans that represent their hopes and fears, what makes them happy, angry or sad, issues they want to oppose or champion. Over the course of the exhibition, select submissions will be translated into red and white drawings which will be pinned directly on to the gallery walls as an in situ installation evolving over six months. Through collaboration, the demonstration will grow, thus capturing Canada’s social and political landscape through the eyes of its inhabitants.

Open call: participate by sending in your submissions, view submission guidelines here.

Support for the Winter 2018 Exhibition Season is by Presenting Sponsor: TD Bank

Support for The Field of Emotion include Presenting Donor: Jack Weinbaum Family Foundation; Major Donors: Nadir & Shabin Mohamed; Support Donors: Liza Mauer & Andrew Sheiner, Elisa Nuyten & David Dime, and Peter M. Ross; International Art Partners: Diversity Art Forum, Consulate General of France in Toronto, and Goethe-Institut; Supported By Galleria Continua, Galerie Krinzinger, and Lehmann Maupin.

Support for The Song of the Germans include Support Donors: Laura Hale & John Matheson.

Support for DEMONSTRATION includes Presenting Donors: Nancy McCain & Bill Morneau; Donor: Nadine Léonard; International Arts Partner: British Council; Supported by Thomas Dane Gallery and Sennelier / Savoir-Faire.

Admission at The Power Plant is all year, all free, presented by BMO Bank of Montreal.

Director: Gaëtane Verna
Media contact: Nadia Yau, Marketing & Communications Officer / media [​at​] thepowerplant.org / T +1 416 973 4927