Curated by Nadja Pelkey
Andrea Carvalho, Czarina Mendoza, Laura Madera, Casey Plett
Publication (Engligh)
Publication (Tagalog)
Opening reception: January 10, 7pm
Intended for in the house, Czarina Mendoza, 2020. Photo by Nadja Pelkey.
Placed gathers the work of three artists and one writer working through articulations of home and place. Andrea Carvalho (Hamilton, ON) and Czarina Mendoza (Windsor, ON) both work with domestic materials and architectonic forms to explore how cultural traditions and iconography are re-imagined by second-generation Canadians. Laura Madera (Peterborough, ON) works with watercolour and latex resists on non-absortive supports to create works that complicate an understanding of landscape. Interspersed through the exhibition space are excerpts from the novel Little Fish by Casey Plett (Windsor, ON). Plett’s novel follows the central character reconciling a complicated rural familial history, with her life in Winnipeg.
Casey Plett:
Casey Plett wrote the novel Little Fish, the short story collection A Safe Girl to Love, and co-edited Meanwhile, Elsewhere: Science Fiction and Fantasy From Transgender Writers. She is the recipient of the Amazon.ca First Novel Award, the ALA Stonewall Barbara Gittings Literature Award, and a two-time recipient of the Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Fiction. caseyplett.com”
Alternately warm-hearted and dark-spirited, desperate and mirthful, Little Fish explores the winter of discontent in the life of one transgender woman as her past and future become irrevocably entwined.
Czarina Mendoza:
Czarina Mendoza is a multidisciplinary artist who draws reference from exported goods, inherited cultural memory and her obsession with Asian supermarkets. Currently, through a material-based practice, she explores Philippine gift-giving traditions, both in its intrinsic and extrinsic nature, in attempts to realize and legitimize a cultural artifact. Her process challenges inherent hierarchies associated with the mobility of labour, objects, and capital. While her work examines the Filipinx diaspora, her main focus lies in the intricacies of reciprocating ritual practice and familial expectation. Czarina continues her art practice in Windsor working with fellow collective members of LEFT Contemporary gallery and studio space.
Andrea Carvalho:
Andrea Carvalho’s practice is centered within a dialogue of space, the built environment, and experiences of the everyday through post-minimal aesthetics and conceptual approaches. It considers the conditions that constitute a site as a place, socially, architecturally, and geographically in an effort to force a sense of belonging. The works in Placed speak to a narrative of social tension and despondency – firm yet unable to move forward.
Andrea Carvalho holds an MFA from Concordia University, Montreal QC. Her practice, while rooted in sculpture and installation, includes site-specific performance, and drawing that explores variable connections to place through the built environment, and notions of belonging. She has participated in several group exhibitions at Eastern Edge (Newfoundland), Cambridge Galleries (Ontario), Dare-Dare (Montreal), Art-Mur (Montreal), Burlington Arts Centre (Ontario), as well as solo exhibitions at Forest City Gallery (London), and Latcham Gallery (Stouffville). She has been invited to participate in residencies in Windsor and speak in Newfoundland, Ontario, Quebec, and British Columbia. Andrea has worked as an Art Educator, Curator, and Director of the Hamilton Artists Inc., and continues to work in the cultural sector.
Laura Madera Laura Madera received her BFA from Emily Carr University, BC and an MFA from the University of Guelph, ON. Her practice explores the potential of watercolour as a means to poetically investigate phenomena within a contemporary context. Her work has been exhibited in solo exhibitions at Evans Contemporary in Peterborough ON, Monastiraki in Montreal QC, The Bakery on Franklin in Vancouver BC and is held in private collections across Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom. Canadian Art Magazine has consistently listed her solo exhibitions in their “Must-sees This Week”. She was named as one of Canada’s most promising emerging painters by the Magenta Foundation. She is a recent recipient of an Emerging Artist Production grant from the Ontario Arts Council and served as a member of the Board of Directors at Artspace.
