Maria Thereza Alves 2018 Global Experience Project Artist in Residence, OCAD U
Oct 15 to Dec 21, 2018, Toronto – Naples
The Jack Weinbaum Family Foundation Global Experience Project
at OCAD University
Resident Artist Maria Thereza Alves
OCAD U’s Faculty of Art is honoured to host acclaimed international artist, Maria Thereza Alves as the Jack Weinbaum Family Foundation Global Experience Project (GEP) Artist in Residence.
GEP 2018 unfolds through two phases and across two cities: Toronto, Canada and Naples, Italy. From October 15 to November 9, 2018, Maria Thereza Alves is in residence at OCAD U and from December 10 to 21 OCAD U students travel with Alves to her Naples studio.
This innovative experiential learning opportunity is designed to introduce OCAD U students and faculty to a contemporary art practice that draws on local urban environments while examining global connections between cities and countries.
A critical inquiry into how ideas and people move across borders, GEP is a vital component of OCAD U’s new Art as Social Change (ASOC) Degree Minor. Alves traces social, environmental and political realities. Her work examines persistent colonial and imperial structures of power in relation to geo-political borders, migration policies and land developments. Maria Thereza Alves’s work exemplifies art that is driven to engage social spaces and contexts through collaboration, advocacy and activism.
Public Events:
Free Artist Talk: Mon, Oct. 29, 7:30 p.m. (public reception 6:30 p.m.)
OCAD University, Auditorium, 100 McCaul Street, Toronto
Workshop by Maria Thereza Alves & Lisa Myers: Mon, Oct. 22, 6:30 pm
Art Museum at the University of Toronto, University of Toronto Art Centre, 15 King’s College Circle, Toronto
For more information on GEP, see our website: http://www.ocadu.ca/academics/faculty-of-art/globalexperience.htm
About the Artist: Since the 1980s, Alves has produced a body of work that investigates the histories and circumstances of specific localities worldwide in order to give witness to silenced histories. Her research-based art develops out of interactions with the physical and social environments. Responding to local needs and proceeding through a process of dialogue facilitated by direct involvement in material, environmental and social circumstances, Alves explores spaces of agency and visibility. Alves participated in the 2017 Sharjah Biennale and in the Bienal de São Paulo of 2016 with the work A Possible Reversal of Missed Opportunities, which attempts to decolonize the imagination within the Brazilian contemporary context. The artist’s new book, Recipes for Survival (University of Texas Press 2018), presents a searing photo documentary of life in southern Brazil. Alves’s ongoing project Seeds of Change has been awarded the Vera List Center Prize for Art and Politics for 2016-2018.