CAFKA – Contemporary Art Forum Kitchener and Area is pleased to be teaming up with the Walper Hotel to exhibit eight provocative art installations throughout the hotel. The exhibition will open Thursday, May 2 at 7 PM and run through August 11, 2013. Art works in the exhibition are available for public viewing daily between 9 AM and 9 PM.

Since its inception CAFKA has been a fall festival of contemporary art in public spaces. Following SURVIVE. RESIST., CAFKA’s last biennial exhibition, the organization decided to become a biennial spring event and that we would in the future be collaborating closely with our sister festival the Open Ears Festival of Music and Sound. CAFKA @ The Walper Hotel and Between the Ears is our first spring event, our first collaborative program and a hint of things to come.

CAFKA @ The Walper Hotel is a program of contemporary art installations that engage the unique spaces of the historic Walper Hotel in downtown Kitchener. The exhibition consists of sculptural intervention, photography, animation, sound installation, and mixed media installation. The projects presented here, we hope, will engage the Walper’s patrons and the staff and animate the life and history of this busy urban hotel. 

Artists featured in CAFKA @ The Walper Hotel will be Laura De Decker (Waterloo, ON), Dave Dyment (Toronto, ON), Manuela Lalic (Montréal, QC), Tor Lukasik-Foss (Hamilton, ON), Ellen Moffat (Saskatoon, SK), Janet Morton (Guelph, ON), Daniel Olson (Montréal, QC), and Stephanie Vegh (Hamilton, ON). 

Two of the installations in CAFKA @ The Walper Hotel – Hamilton artist Tor Lukasik-Foss’s Closet of Intimacies: A Shadow Box for a Semi-Private Performance, and Saskatoon artist Ellen Moffat’s pingringtootle – are sound art installations that will be featured during Between the Ears. CAFKA artists Scott Carter (Chicago, IL) Christof Migone are also featured in the May 31 program at the Kitchener City Hall.  

CAFKA @ THE WALPER HOTEL was made possible with the support of the Walper Hotel, Region Of Waterloo Arts Fund, Creative Enterprise Initiative, Ontario Trillium Foundation, Christie Digital, City of Kitchener, Kitchener And Waterloo Community Foundation - Musagetes Fund, Canada Council For The Arts, Ontario Arts Council, Carbon Computing, Kitchener.

Image: Stephanie Vegh, The Hive and the Host (detail). Photo: Stephanie Vegh.