University of Manitoba School of Art Gallery: cause to become - Whess Harman, Mariana Muñoz Gomez, Florence Yee, and Hagere Selam (shimby) Zegeye-Gebrehiwot - Curated by Christina Hajjar, April 1 - May 14
Whess Harman, Mariana Muñoz Gomez, Florence Yee, and Hagere Selam (shimby) Zegeye-Gebrehiwot
Curated by Christina Hajjar
April 1 to May 14, 2021
To be living in a diaspora, away from the lands of our lineage creates a generative longing that is stubbornly, rightfully unquenchable. Instead of characterizing longing through the void, cause to become engages memory, imagination, and rumination as processes that generate alternative life paths, self-determined and with creative defiance. Through criticality and sentimentality, the aesthetic practices of queer diaspora "disorient and reorient us"—as scholar Gayatri Gopinath puts it—representing liminality and states of suspension as active, productive, disruptive sites.
To "cause to become'' is to render. Being a queer person of colour in a hostile world necessitates art-making as a validating method of identity exploration, intimacy, and world-building. This group exhibition brings together works in various media ranging from Super 8 film and CMYK screen printing to typography, poetry, and embroidery. Artists Whess Harman, Mariana Muñoz Gomez, Florence Yee, and Hagere Selam (shimby) Zegeye-Gebrehiwot demonstrate the value in remembering, imagining, or anticipating home or place, and constructing alternative modes of becoming.
Adjunct Programming
Unruly Visions: The Aesthetic Practices of Queer Diaspora: A Lecture by Dr. Gayatri Gopinath
Thursday, April 15, 7:00 to 8:30 p.m. CDT
Facilitated on Zoom and live-streaming on the School of Art Gallery, University of Manitoba YouTube channel. Live captions and ASL available. Event will be recorded and uploaded to YouTube.
Presented in partnership with the gracious support of the University of Manitoba Institute for the Humanities.
Mariana Muñoz Gomez
mapping elsewhere: A Reading by Mariana Muñoz Gomez
Thursday, May 6, 7:00 to 8:30 p.m. CDT
Facilitated on Zoom and live-streaming on the School of Art Gallery, University of Manitoba YouTube channel. Live captions and ASL available. Event will be recorded and uploaded to YouTube.
Exhibition and adjunct programming presented with the support of the Government of
Canada through the Young Canada Works program, Building Careers in Heritage.
School of Art Gallery
255 ARTlab
180 Dafoe Road
Winnipeg MB R3T2N2
umanitoba.ca/schools/art/gallery
For more information, contact School of Art Communications and Events Coordinator Cailyn Harrison, cailyn.harrison@umanitoba.ca.
The University of Manitoba campuses are located on original lands of Anishinaabeg, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota, and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.
We respect the Treaties that were made on these territories, we acknowledge the harms and mistakes of the past, and we dedicate ourselves to move forward in partnership with Indigenous communities in a spirit of reconciliation and collaboration.
