CAFKA is pleased to announce that Toronto-based artist Robert Hengeveld will be the inaugural speaker in the CAFKA Rewind speakers' series at the Waterloo Public Library on Monday, September 25 at 7 PM.
CAFKA Rewind is a series of artist talks with a difference. Our guest speakers are familiar figures: They have each exhibited work with CAFKA over the course of our 16-year history. Many in the Region have not only seen their work, a lot of us also helped make these pieces happen. Some of these projects drew criticism in the community and the subsequent controversies sometimes involved the local media and municipal governments. CAFKA Rewind will go over some of this familiar territory. We want to examine how the projects were developed, explore the nature of the disagreements within the community and reflect on how we have changed in the years since.
Robert Hengeveld’s work in CAFKA.09 and CAFKA.14 could not be described as “in your face.” His 2009 floating shopping cart “Uprising,” and “Ssspun,” his slowly spinning tree in 2014, probably passed under the threshold of awareness for many park-goers in Victoria and Waterloo parks. When they were seen, however, these pieces elicited “double-takes” of both disbelief (Ssspun) or outrage (Uprising).
He could have been addressing either piece when he writes about Uprising, “It's the kind of thing that's odd or different enough to catch our attention and make us take notice, simply because it flies in the face of how we understand the world around us.”
Robert Hengeveld completed his MFA at the University of Victoria in 2005 after studing at the Ontario College of Art and Design. His work has been exhibited across Canada and internationally. Past and upcoming exhibitions include The Power Plant (Toronto), Hallwalls Contemporary (Buffalo), MacDonald Stewart (Guelph), EyeLevel Gallery (Halifax), Mercer Union (Toronto), and Mulherin Pollard (NYC).
CAFKA Rewind has been made possible with the support of the City of Waterloo.
For more information about CAFKA Rewind and other speakers in the series, please contact us at cafka at cafka.org.
Image top: Robert Hengeveld, Uprising, LDPE tubing, .91 x .53 x 1.02 m., Victoria Park Lake, Kitchener, CAFKA.09. Photo: Gordon Hatt.
Image middle: Robert Hengeveld, Uprising, Photo: Robert Hengeveld.
Images below: Robert Hengeveld, Ssspun, mixed media, Waterloo Park, Waterloo, CAFKA.14. Photo left: Karie Liao, Photo right: Robert McNair.
CAFKA is supported by the City of Kitchener, Kitchener and Waterloo Community Foundation: Musagetes Fund, Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, City of Waterloo and individual donors and volunteers.
