Public Volumes
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soJin Chun
soJin Chun's multi-channel project FLUX-CITIES tackles how displacement and gentrification persist within local and international contexts. Each chapter in the video marks a different location that has been impacted by an uneasy relationship between development and community well-being. The videos that are shown as part of this project look specifically to Taiwan and various Canadian cities. In the images of Taiwan, Chun focuses on the failure of capitalism and modernism by showing abandoned living spaces. Canadian neighbourhoods, including Regent Park, similarly express the political and economic tensions that threaten local subsistence and social health. Chun intervenes specifically in the images of Taiwan through drawings, or a kind of digital graffiti, that seem to offer an attempt at re-claiming these spaces for further consideration. The hand-held quality of the videos also seems to serve a specific purpose of rejecting all-too- common overly aestheticized and fetishistic images of ruin and decay. By bringing together such far-reaching examples of urban and architectural uncertainty, the project asks that we take stock of the prevalence of such issues on a global scale.
soJin Chun is a Toronto-based artist working in video and installation. While telling narratives that emerge in-between cultures, Chun works in local communities in which she has strong personal affiliations. Chun is inspired by her diasporic experience as a Korean-born woman who has been an immigrant in Bolivia and Canada. Chun has participated in artist residencies in Brazil, Canada, Bolivia and Serbia. Through participatory residencies, Chun has developed a collaborative art practice to investigate local narratives of political struggles in Latin America looking at communities fighting to overcome the effects of colonization and globalization. Chun has participated in video screening and exhibitions in Bolivia, Brazil, France, Sweden, Germany, Spain, South Africa, Taiwan and the United States. Her video works are represented by GIV (Montreal), CFMDC (Toronto) and V-Tape (Toronto). Chun has a B.A. in Applied Arts from Ryerson University and a Masters in Communications and Culture from Ryerson/York Universities.
This installation is presented as part of Public Volumes, a large-scale project taking place across the Small Arms Inspection Building, Bradley Museum and the Great Hall at Mississauga Civic Centre.
Image caption: soJin Chun, video still from FLUX-CITIES, 2019.
LeuWebb Projects
This large-scale outdoor installation considers the fence as a marker for exclusion and the boundaries that are drawn around public and private spaces. While barriers are often implicated in larger concerns related to control and power structures, fences can also provide security and sanctuary. Drawing out these tensions, LeuWebb's site-specific work aims to use the fence as a starting off point to consider how the land around Bradley Museum has been occupied, settled and colonized. Looking both forward and backwards, LeuWebb calls into question, as they note, the site's origins while looking to the fence to expand outward to the current and near future ideas of nation and boundary, impermeability of borders and the shifting relationships and attitudes toward migrant's and refugee's freedom of movement. The artists further explain that this work "engages in a dialogue with the Bradley Museum site and adds a new critical layer that opens up questions about control, exclusion and inclusion, ultimately seeking to complicate the idea of the fence through subverting its function and formal qualities, inviting the potential for play and participatory structural manipulations."
Founded by Christine Leu and Alan Webb, LeuWebb Projects operates at a variety of scales and across a range of disciplines. Light, space, texture and sound are key components of their work that they weave together through the innovative use of materials and technologies to create site-specific art that is not only seen, but is also experienced. Their collaborative practice draws on art and architecture, embracing the process of creative exploration to produce moments of beauty in the public realm. They seek to engage people with both the tangible and the ephemeral aspects of everyday life by creating art that stimulates curiosity, suggests play, and inspires its participants. They have lived and worked in Montreal, New York, London, Denmark, Rome and Helsinki, and currently reside in Toronto.
This installation is presented as part of Public Volumes, a large-scale project taking place across the Small Arms Inspection Building, Bradley Museum and the Great Hall at Mississauga Civic Centre.
Image caption: LeuWebb Projects, artist sketch for Long Division, 2018.
Here's what's hot
The City of Mississauga will recognize its third Poet Laureate in 2019. The role of the Poet Laureate is to elevate the status of poetry, literary arts and writers within their communities and beyond.
Mississauga's favourite maple tradition returns to the Bradley Museum for March Break. Join us for tasty pancakes at the Sugar Shack and more creative activities for all ages.
Family Day PJ Skate 2019 at Celebration Square. Waddle over in your favourite pyjamas and join us for some free, indoor-outdoor family day fun!
Public Volumes brings together exhibitions, public programming and writing that centre around broad interpretations of spatial justice. These many projects focus in or out from a particular location or series of locations, fostering deeper insight into why space matters.