University of Winnipeg and downtown community newspaper
University of Winnipeg and downtown community newspaper
Not the Camera, But the Filing Cabinet: Performative Body Archives in Contemporary Art is a group exhibition curated by University of Winnipeg alumna Noor Bhangu. The exhibit features the work of 10 national and international artists that explore representations of the female and non-binary body through painting, drawing, photography, sculpture, video, audio, and performance works. Artists include Susan Aydan Abbott, Jade Nasogaluak Carpenter, Sarah Ciurysek, Dayna Danger, Christina Hajjar, Ayqa Khan, Luna, Matea Radic, Sophie Sabet, and Leesa Streifler.
Using the “filing cabinet” as a metaphor for a feminist archive and archiving practices, Not the Camera, But the Filing Cabinet unpacks the ways in which the body itself can be a location for personal and collective histories. In particular, the focus is on issues of body image, aging, psychic trauma, displacement, diasporic movement and, most importantly, cultural survivance. This exhibition decisively presents a challenge to official archives by elevating the agency of women, queer, and non-binary artists in narrating their own stories from places of localized knowledge. In doing so, it signifies the female body as a worked surface that can be worked again in the present and future.
Gallery hours: weekdays, 12:00 - 4:00 pm and Saturdays, 1:00 - 4:00 pm. Closed statutory holidays.
Image: Sophie Sabet, Though I am Silent, I Shake, 2017, excerpt from single channel video. Courtesy of the artist.