CAFKA.11

SURVIVE. RESIST.

The Contemporary Art Forum Kitchener and Area announces its fall biennial program, CAFKA.11. SURVIVE. RESIST. running from September 16 through October 2, 2011.

The 8th edition of the Contemporary Art Forum Kitchener and Area’s (CAFKA) exhibition of contemporary art projects in public places will open on September 16, 2011.  The biennial exhibition began at the Kitchener City Hall in 2000, and since that time it has grown every year.  It has grown in duration from a weekend festival of visual art to a 17-day program.  It has expanded beyond the Kitchener City Hall to take place throughout Kitchener’s downtown and now embraces the neighbouring municipalities of Waterloo and Cambridge.  Each year CAFKA’s projects, installations and projections are more ambitious.

Focussing on art in public spaces, the CAFKA programming committee has identified some of the most interesting work in contemporary public art and has invited these artists to develop projects for the biennial.  In recognition of the variety of strategies employed by contemporary artists to negotiate the complex social, political, psychological and aesthetic terrain of a looming ecological dystopia, the theme for the 2011 biennial will be SURVIVE. RESIST.

New initiatives this year include CAFKA’s collaboration with its lead corporate sponsor, Christie, to develop content using Christie’s new 3-D imaging cave at the Communitech Hub.  CAFKA has invited Guelph-based video artist Jenn E. Norton to work with lead engineers at Christie to develop her work Tesseract, will be presented during the biennial.  

CAFKA will be collaborating with the 2011 conference of the Society for Literature, Science and Art (SLSA), which will take place in Kitchener the second weekend of the exhibition. The SLSA is an international academic society that explores the problems of science and representation, and the cultural and social dimensions of science, technology, and medicine.  Academics from across North America and Europe will present papers and participate in symposia.  The SLSA conference will take place during CAFKA’s second weekend (September 22 - 25).

CAFKA will also be collaborating with various organizations who are presenting programming in concert with CAFKA. These organizations include Cambridge Galleries, Cambridge Sculpture Garden, The Critical Media Lab, Communitech HUB, Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, Clay & Glass Gallery, THEMUSEUM, University of Waterloo Art Gallery, and Sceneverse.

Artists featured in SURVIVE. RESIST. and their locations:
 
 

01. Michael Ambedian & Sheila McMath (Kitchener, ON) - Imitate

Imitate (after Nils Udo), 2011, tree root, earth, 91 x 61 cm

Michael Ambedian and Sheila McMath re-created well-known earthworks that invited viewers who knew the original works to consider the differences.  These works were also be accessible to others who have no experience of the "original."  The artists anticipated a conversation and interaction between people with knowledge of the "originals" and those experiencing the works for the first time. By resurrecting these well-known works Ambedian and McMath are exposing them to a new audience.

 
Michael Ambedian completed his BFA at the University of Windsor (1998) and his MFA at the University of Waterloo (2001). In 2003, he was the Artist in Residence for the City of Kitchener. Through his artistic practice, he explores discarded materials and touches on themes including labour, spirituality and the environment.  Michael has exhibited his work throughout Southern Ontario and the United States.  
 
Kitchener artist Sheila McMath is originally from Windsor, Ontario and is an alumna of the MFA program at University of Waterloo. She has exhibited her assemblage sculptures at various galleries across Ontario. An artwork from her series called Tissues and Trimmings was included in the Cambridge Galleries biannual Fibreworks exhibition and was purchased for the permanent collection.  In 2009, she was recognized as one of The Record’s 40 under 40, as a community leader for her work as an arts educator and advocate.  
 
RARE Charitable Research Reserve, 1679 Blair Road, Cambridge, N3H 4R8

 

02. BGL (Quebec City, QC) - Fancy Fences

Roy Street, Kitchener.
 
Crowd control barriers of the type used by BGL are normally employed by authorities to proscribe areas of permitted public accessibility and activity during events and political demonstrations. With these barriers, high above the ground and suspended from the branches of trees and lampposts, as if tossed in the air by a tornado, BGL invite us to imagine the liberation of social life without restraint.
 
Known for cheeky, critical and explosive works, BGL (Jasmin Bilodeau, Sébastien Giguère and Nicolas Laverdière) are know for creating self-referential in-situ installations that take over architecture and encompass a gallery’s context. The resulting artworks speak directly to contemporary culture and the nostalgia of memory. BGL was created while the three were studying at Laval University. For over 13 years, they have exhibited widely and frequently both in solo and group exhibitions including The 1er Bienal del fin del mundo, Ushuaia, Argentina; the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal; Musée d’art moderne Lille Métropole, France; Mercer Union, Toronto; Hart House, University of Toronto; The Havana Biennale, Cuba; and The Montréal Biennale. They have been recognized by the Canada Council for the Arts, The Conseil des arts et letters du Québec and are finalists for the Sobey Award. Their work is found in the collections of the Musée National des Beaux-arts du Québec, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and the National Gallery of Canada. 

03. Broken City Lab (Windsor, ON) - Reflect on Here

Kitchener City Hall, 200 King Street West, Kitchener.

Stationed directly in front of City Hall, Broken City Lab will present Reflect On Here – a sign built with 8-foot-tall letters coated in retro-reflective material, which will come to light at each turn of a vehicle from dusk until dawn. Reflect On Here calls on people to think on the infrastructure of the city, the attempt to create place with architecture, and the materiality of the text itself.
 
Broken City Lab is an artist-led interdisciplinary creative research group that tactically disrupts and engages the city, its communities, and its infrastructures to re-imagine the potential for action in the collapsing post-industrial city of Windsor, Ontario.