Pedestrian Values reflects on economic shifts, labour patterns and development in post-industrial urban cities. Using metal fabrication, casting, and interventionist tactics to alter coded materials and infrastructure found in public space, the installations reveal underlying power structures in urban environments, critiquing capitalist value systems focused on profit and development, exposing how these ideals are built into our everyday environment.

The recurring banknote pattern from the board game, Monopoly, serves as an explicit critique of capital’s control over spatial relations that carries through the exhibition, adorning a traffic barrel, cast coins scattered across the floor of the gallery, and a construction privacy mesh.

Wìdjideyamawowin brings together Craig Commanda’s work in film, video, beadwork, and other media. Also known as a poet and musician, this artist from Kitigan Zibi territory (near Maniwaki, Quebec) presents work which is a meditation on being, identity, and culture.

Biography

Craig Commanda is an Anishnaabe multi-disciplinary artist from Kitigan Zibi First Nation, whose work encompasses film, music, beadwork, poetry, photography, traditional crafts, hide tanning, and digital fabrication.  He holds a BFA in Film Production from Concordia University. 

Dawson’s Department of Photography is proud to present Scintilla, the selected work of  students nearing the end of their three-year program.  Part of their preparation, and requirement to graduate, this exhibition showcases the breadth and depth of their acquired skills, as well as the variety and dynamism of the program which nurtured them.  Included is the work of:  Ruth Aibangbe, Mario Al Khoury, Michelle Andrews, Adriana Balaban, Nina Binetti, Joshua Bubis, Elizabeth Charlton-Febrile, Oriette Constantineau, Laurence Dyotte, Gustavo Gallegos, Jamie Gianfelice, Grace Kennedy, Tommy-Paul Keo, Taylor Kirby, Katherina Kunanec, Samson Marthet, Ekaterina Nurova, Robin, Bahareh Rafati, Marjan Safari, and Sofia Terrigno.

Bahar Taheri approaches contemporary concerns through painting, video, and mixed-media installations. Through her practice, she has delved into aspects of gender, identity, collective memory, and historical events, the means through which our socio-political circumstances are shaped.

More recently, her work is subtly moving from figuration to geometric abstraction. In addition, Taheri has been deconstructing buildings; folding and unfolding monumental walls until binaries, absolutes and hierarchies dissolve into a reconstructed rupture from reality.

Her project, Oneness, depicts a utopian universe at the intersection of several countries, cultures, and beliefs.

My painting practice has an ambivalent relationship with the history of Canadian landscape painting. I am interested in how romantic notions of nature that correspond with popular modernist Canadian painters often fall apart in a contemporary context.

I use photographs of my suburban hometown of Port Coquitlam as the basis for many of my paintings. While these photographs have a connection to my own history, they also connect to a larger history of Canada and the legacy of colonialism in our country.

Catalina Hernandez Camacho, Zion Axell Fabro, Leen Jaafar, Jona Loomis, Ximena Ribeiro Tamiez, and Alessandro Ruvo present works which evoke a mindset in diverse and playful ways.

These graduates of Dawson’s respected Visual Arts program are distinguished by having began their studies in a global pandemic. Most started their Dawson coursework under partial, or ‘hybrid’ presence in smaller groups courses such as printmaking and sculpture; the rest were carried out in confinement at home, with online lectures and meetings

This was reflected in the work presented in this year’s graduation—a turning of the mind inward, to issues surrounding the self and occasionally family, which leads to the title of this presentation, mindset.

The Dawson Fine Arts department is proud to present this year’s graduating student exhibition, entitled Liminal. A culmination of their two years of intensive studies, this exhibition highlights the wide variety of artistic practices explored by the thirty graduating participants. The exhibition will extend from the gallery to Room 2G.4 and the 2G corridor.

Graduating students include: Issa Emmanuelle Albite, Anisia Alexe, Zoë Bleho-Levacher, Marianne Boisseau, Kayliah Della Foresta, Julia Demers, Rowan Michael Draper, Simone Duhamel, Zion Axelle Fabro, Ella Gauthier, Yuan He (Charlotte) Ge, Hichem Gervais, Emie Hamanaka-Delisle, Hannah Hamelin, Catalina Hernandez-Camacho, Leen Jaafar, Teodora Hristova Kachulkova, Jona Loomis, Emlyne Marchand, Anthony Mastrangelo , Roberto Alejandro Nunez Almendarez, Krisha Patel, Raina Proulx-Sanyal, Ming Qi, Anaïs-Aimée Rafaelsen, Ximena Ribeiro Tamez, Alessandro Ruvo, Angel Starnino, Nan Wang, and Le Shui Yu.

My work explores a connecting thread between Mi’gmaw and Eurocentric worldviews, using a visual language that is both symbolic and literal. It is enriched by the history of the bead to carry knowledge, communicate, evoke, and express Spirit. I embrace the bead as infinite potentiality, appearing divided, as part, and at once whole and all-encompassing. (Renee Condo)

Renee Condo (b.1979) is a contemporary visual artist of Mi’gmaw ancestry from the community of Gesgapegiag, Quebec.

Filiations features new work by Nadia Myre (Kitigan Zibi), and Nico Williams (Aamjiwnaang), both acclaimed artists who are linked by their former teacher-student relationship (Myre supervised Williams’ MFA work at Concordia University). This exhibition will draw out lines of affiliation and commitment in their practices providing an unparalleled opportunity to see two generations of artists staking out common ground – pedagogically, aesthetically, and politically.

Listen to Nadia Myre and Nico Williams in conversation

Untitled is a varied collection of images presented by the fall 2022 graduates of Dawson’s AEC Commercial Photography Program.

Seven students, including Fiona Campanelli, Valeria Cori-Manocchio, Surah Field-Green, Nicholas Gagnon, Molière Solon, Nadim Zakkour and Atena Zare, showcase their work in portraiture, fashion, product, sports photography and more. Their adventure at Dawson began in an unusual way–on a computer instead of in a classroom. Pursuing photography during a global pandemic wasn’t always easy, but they learned to hone their craft, and present their achievements with pride here.