Programs | The Activation Map

Programs

Touch

September 17, 1996 to October 5, 1996
Exhibition
Johannes Zits' paintings explore representations of gay sexuality within the context of painting. His new work continues in this vein, presenting images of bar interiors and gay couples, on a scale and in the style of Abstract Expressinoism. The result is a kind of warring of two disparate languages: the extreme America machismo of Abstract Expressionism with its almost hyperbolic expression of a private subjective state and the contemporary representations of the more politicized private spaces of gay bars. Zits' work poses questions pertaining to the language of painting-laden with a modernist history-and the language of contemporary media culture with its emphasis on issues of identity and social space and sets up a tension between the two.

July 16, 1996 to August 3, 1996
Exhibition
This exhibition traces the various strategies Laiwan has chosen over the years (from 1982 to present) in her investigation of categorized identity. These works don't posit right/wrong, us/them dichotomies, nor do they get washed away in liberal post-modern ambiguities. Using language as a primary source of engagement, Laiwan draws the viewer into a position that only self examination of our own "uniqueness" and sense of moral responsibility can complete. With just ourselves to consider, these art works become powerful reminders of the limits of our constructed perceptions.

May 29, 1996
Performance
The artist religious leaders who are participating in this exhibition of sacrificial art (sacrificial in the sense of gift or offering) are the new wave of human beings who are discovering their own truths. They are not hanging back and waiting for the cogitations and directives of official functionaries.

April 30, 1996 to May 18, 1996
Exhibition
The concept for the "hibernacula" project has evolved from issues raised in my most recent series, "romantic notions" (see slides 1-17). The "romantic notions" series examines and interferes with the construction and results of gender based roles and stereotypes and delves into how these ideas are perpetuated in our society and within ourselves. This work was conceived from a feminist perspective and from a position of not conforming entirely to feminine models inherent in our sociall structures. In researching and examining aspects of gender and other social stereotypes in relation to the construction of identity I have begun to focus on memory in both a cultural/social and personal context.

April 18, 1996
Performance
A collaboration of photography and performance documenting a journey of transformation through gender and the shadow. Photography, through darkroom manipulation of multiple images incorporated into a single photograph illustrating the journey with 8 to 10 images printed with liquid light on large format fibre-based paper. Performance, to tell the story through a combination of music-partly pre-recorded and composed by the author and two additional musicians as well as through spoken word, teatre and movement.