March 13–August 16, 2021
Remai Modern is pleased to announce its 2021 winter/spring program: Source, an exhibition by Vancouver-born, Brooklyn-based artist Sara Cwynar; Thelma Pepper: Ordinary Women. A Retrospective, a comprehensive review of the work of the Saskatchewan photographer known for her black and white photographs of the Prairies and its people; and An apology, a pill, a ritual, a resistance, a group exhibition of works by an international, intergenerational group of artists. In this moment of our shared circumstances of a global pandemic and unprecedented social transformation, the artworks included in these exhibitions range from those that ground us in place and individual encounters to those that engage us in virtual and otherwise collective experiences.
Sara Cwynar: Source, until May 24
Drawing on an ever-expanding collection of image and objects, Sara Cwynar has developed a distinctive visual language. She combines materials from a multitude of sources, including thrift stores, eBay, discarded photo albums, art history books, fashion and luxury advertising. Her process often shifts back and forth between printing, collaging, assembling and re-capturing. The resulting compositions are dense, chaotic and logic-defying, speaking to the endless accumulation of consumer products and pictures. Source is Cwynar’s largest museum project to date, and features two expansive new installations combining still and moving images, alongside an immersive viewing environment for Red Film (2018), the last work in the artist’s recent cinematic trilogy.
Source is on view in Remai Modern’s Feature Gallery from January 30 to May 24.
Thelma Pepper: Ordinary Women. A Retrospective, until August 15
Ordinary Women, a collaboration between Remai Modern and the University of Saskatchewan Art Galleries and Collection, includes works from both the museum’s and the university’s collections. Pepper, who died in December 2020 at the age of 100, documented the lives of Prairie women and men, putting their experiences and resilience into focus. Connecting through shared stories, Pepper illuminated the critical roles women held within their seemingly ordinary, everyday environments. Her photographs exemplify compassion, dignity and intimacy, a result of her deep curiosity and warmth. The exhibition includes Pepper’s three bodies of work, all comprised of silver gelatin prints printed in her home darkroom. They are placed in context alongside several other women photographers: Rosalie Favell, Mattie Gunterman, Dorothea Lange, Frances Robson and Sandra Semchuk. Their work contextualizes and foregrounds the perspectives of women, as artists and as subjects, providing a larger frame in which to consider Pepper’s beyond its value as an historical record.
Thelma Pepper: Ordinary Women. A Retrospective is on view in Remai Modern’s Collection Galleries from February 13 to August 15, and is presented with the support of the Frank and Ellen Remai Foundation.
An apology, a pill, a ritual, a resistance, until May 24
In part a response to the COVID-19 pandemic and coinciding social issues, An apology, a pill, a ritual, a resistance clusters together works exploring or enacting methods of healing and the pain that often must be endured to get better. Specific subjects range from Indigenous responses to smallpox and the 1918 influenza pandemic, to iconic works by artists grappling with the HIV/AIDS crisis, and apologies and acts of reconciliation that move toward healing the fractures at the foundation of settler-colonial countries. The artists featured in the exhibition attend to the sick or disabled body as it intersects with societal injustices, and propose alternate frameworks for care and wellbeing rooted in relation to community and the non-human world. Featured artists include Ruth Cuthand, Wally Dion, Guo Fengyi, Sharona Franklin, General Idea, Jeffrey Gibson, Carsten Höller, Clara Hume, Brian Jungen, Kapwani Kiwanga, Kite, Carolyn Lazard, Candice Lin, Les Levine, Paul Maheke, Dylan Miner, Jane Ash Poitras, Skeena Reece, Allen Sapp, P. Staff, Adrian Stimson, Alberta Whittle and Linda Young.
An apology, a pill, a ritual, a resistance will be on view in Remai Modern’s Connect and Marquee galleries from March 13 to May 24.
About Remai Modern
Remai Modern is situated on Treaty 6 Territory and the Traditional Homeland of the Métis. We pay our respects to First Nations and Métis ancestors and reaffirm our relationship with one another. Remai Modern is a new museum of modern and contemporary art in Saskatoon. The museum is committed to affirming the powerful role that art and artists play in questioning, interpreting and defining the modern era. Open since October 2017, Remai Modern is the largest contemporary art museum in western Canada and houses a collection of more than 8,000 works, including the world’s foremost collection of Picasso linocut prints.
