"True Nordic: How Scandinavia influenced design in Canada" Exhibition

Tuesday, December 13, 2016 - 8:00pm

Come celebrate the end of exams by joining OCADU professor Dr. Michael Prokopow. He will give VCS students a tour of his brilliant exhibition, "True Nordic: How Scandinavia influenced design in Canada," at the Gardiner Museum on Tuesday, December 13, 2016 at 3:00pm.

All in the FoLASSIS community are welcome!

Come out and reignite your love of art history by looking at amazing objects of art and design in the flesh!

Please RSVP to Amy Jung, Program Assistant, FoLASSIS, ajung@ocadu.ca

Venue & Address: 
Gardiner Museum, 111 Queens Park, Toronto, ON M5S 2C7
Website: 
http://www.gardinermuseum.on.ca/exhibition/true-nordic
Email: 
ajung100@ocadu.ca
Poster of the "True Nordic: How Scandinavia influenced design in Canada" exhibition

Neighbourhood Art Tour with Anique J. Jordan

construction hoarding with 'post no bills' warning
Anique standing in front of her artwork on display at the Art Gallery of Ontario
Thursday, September 15, 2016 - 4:00am

On September 8, graduate students from the Interdisciplinary Master’s in Art, Media and Design  and Criticism and Curatorial Practice programs joined artist Anique J. Jordan for a unique neighbourhood tour that highlighted the hidden history of a construction site close to OCAD University.

The tour started behind City Hall on Chestnut Street where the new provincial courthouse building is planned for construction. Anique shared with the group that this site has a deep history that is obscured by the large, grey, hoarding that now traces the perimeter of the lot. Upon beginning construction, the development company discovered thousands of cultural artifacts from the site’s history as the location of a British Methodist Episcopal church, rooted in one of the most ethnically diverse areas of the city called The Ward. Originally built in 1845, the church was a crucial site for Toronto’s black community playing an important role as a spiritual, community, and cultural centre.

Now the site is surrounded by imposing hoarding that demands to ‘post no bills’; it offers no narrative or suggestion of the site as one of historical civic significance. Anique is particularly interested in what she perceives as an erasure of the histories of the black and immigrant communities that previously thrived in that neighbourhood. With no signage, no commemoration, and no invitation for conversation, the current construction site illuminates a complicated relationship between historical preservation and the high-speed drive for new development in Toronto.

From this former church site Anique led the tour group to the Art Gallery of Ontario’s exhibition The Idea of North, where works by contemporary artists are exhibited alongside paintings by the iconic Canadian artist Lawren Harris. Anique’s works in the exhibition speak directly to the history of the black community within The Ward that Harris also used as a subject in many of his early paintings. Her works, that directly reference the Chestnut Street site, create a contemporary history that speaks back to the historical narratives that are currently being built over, in an attempt to recreate a more accurate and honest conversation about the history of our city and its citizens.

This artist tour was organized by Dr. Andrea Fatona, the Graduate Program Director for the Criticism and Curatorial Practice program. It was part of Graduate Studies Orientation week where all new students were welcomed to OCAD U - and its surrounding neighbourhood!

For more on Anique’s work in The Idea of North exhibition, see her interview: http://artmatters.ca/wp/2016/08/an-interview-with-toronto-artist-anique-jordan-lawren-harris-toronto-and-a-complicated-history/

For more on Anique’s work: https://aniquejjordan.com/

For more on the British Methodist Episcopal church construction site: https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/02/15/torontos-black-history-unearthed-in-excavation-of-landmark-church.html

For more on OCAD University graduate programs: http://www.ocadu.ca/academics/graduate-studies.htm

 

Images courtesy of Karina Iskandarsjah www.karinais.com

Faculty Sabbatical Talks

Photograph of carnival scene
Image of a building at night
Wednesday, January 28, 2015 - 8:00pm to 10:00pm

Join the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences & School of Interdisciplinary Studies (LAS/SIS) to learn about two of our faculty members' research experiences during their sabbaticals:

DAVID MCINTOSH
Quipucamayoc: A Cusco/Buenos Aires Performative Communications Network
Dr. David McIntosh is Associate Professor of Media Studies. His primary research fields are globalization and the political-economies of audiovisual spaces; network theories and practices; new media narrativity; mobile locative media; game theory; digital documents; Latin American media studies; and queer media. In 2008, McIntosh was the recipient of the first OCAD University Award for a Career of Distinguished Research and Creation. In 2012 he was
awarded a SSHRC Insight Research and Creation grant to undertake Quipucamayoc. This Sabbatical Talk will address a range of research and creation activities in relation to Quipucamayoc, as of year 2 in its 4 year process, including: adaptation of historical sources for contemporary digital interactive constructions; trans-local collaboration; charette as creative process; interaction and narrative building across art disciplines of analogue and digital movement, sound and wearable creation; interactive digital network construction and contextual application of platforms including Kinect Point Cloud, Skeletal Kinect and a variety of body sensors.

MARIE-JOSÉE THERRIEN
Towards an Inuit School
Dr. Marie-Josée Therrien is Associate Professor of Design and Architectural History. In addition to her academic career, Therrien has worked for museums, television and new media as well as for government research agencies. A heritage activist, she has successfully led two campaigns to protect the integrity of the Toronto Dominion Centre in Toronto. Her research explores design and the built environment in the context of the North American car culture, and she has also published on Canadian embassies and shopping malls. This Sabbatical Talk will address her recent work on the architecture of the post-residential schools in the Arctic. Starting in the late fifties, the oldest schools of the Eastern Arctic established by the different religious were replaced by modern facilities planned by the federal and subsequently by the territorial government. Since then, schools have been built at a fast pace, responding to the process of sedentarization, and reflecting the government’s intentions to standardize the education system. This presentation examines the design of a few schools that testify as much to the evolution of pedagogical orientations as to the sociopolitical and environmental changes since the late fifties.

Venue & Address: 
205 Richmond Street West Room 7315, 3rd Floor