Skkandaloza
Studio Arts
Bachelor of F*cking Arts
Dimensions vary
10 minutes 5 seconds, live video performance & installation, mix objects
October 2023
Description:
Born in Lebanon, Skkandaloza identifies as a video performance artist. They moved to Montreal in August of 2022 in order to develop their artistic practice. As a queer Arab individual, they manifest in their works issues surrounding the Middle Eastern community. Through their performances, they express a reaction to present contemporary issues in the world and in their personal lives.
“Bachelor of F*cking Arts is a live video performance which aims to illustrate how the educational institution (such as art school) plays a role in killing the inner child inside of us. I wanted to explore how the educational system transforms our joy and innocence we have as kids in order to transform us into productive machines. After graduating from grade school, I was so excited to study art as a full time student. Unfortunately, even the things you love the most will seem like a task you need to complete with a lot of constraints to be able to graduate from university.
In this performance piece, I locked myself inside a shed and installed surveillance cameras connected to a TV outside the confined space. This allowed people to view the live footage, and see me as being an experiment by Concordia. Inside the shed, I began by acting like a kid having fun, but as the music would get intense and fast, and the more I’d start to harm myself and become manic. I wanted to show with the fast actions how much work is demanded from us: which will make us more likely to burn out.”
“The idea was to recreate in a smaller version the inside of the shed I was in with the destroyed painting I realized hanging and from a screen part of the performance is playing.”
Nesreen Galal
Visual Arts
loss of identity
Dimensions vary
Installation, Video Art + Performance
2023
Description:
Nesreen Galal is an interdisciplinary artist based in Montreal. Her work mostly centers on notions of identity, memory, the surreal, the uncanny. Additionally, she uses art as a vessel to critique colonial discourse, orientalism, capitalism and the cisgender male gaze. She presents these themes through a diverse variety of mediums, from cyanotype, to salt printing, to lumen print, anthotype, collage, to experimental photography and to filmmaking. Her short film, “Loss of Identity”, was screened in Montreal’s first BIPOC Film Festival in the summer of 2021. Her work has been internationally featured in magazines such as Luna Collective Magazine and Sunstroke Magazine, and she has had the opportunity to showcase her work locally at the likes of VAV Gallery, Eastern Bloc, Livart, Atelier Galerie 2112 and Somewhere Gallery. Recently, she has been focused on photography and printmaking with chemical ingredients. Nesreen is currently in her final fourth year, double majoring in Computation & Studio Arts, as she has a passion for blending both analogue and digital mediums.
Loss of identity 3.0 stems from my personal journey as I grappled with identity confusion. This installation delves into the interplay of various emotional layers, facial expressions, and the act of masking to conform to societal norms. The concept of masking involves concealing or omitting parts of oneself to present a socially acceptable image. My struggles with ADHD (ADHD masking), imposter syndrome and general challenges with fitting in, coupled with my mixed background as a marginalized queer Arab, led me to explore art as a therapeutic process. I crafted masks, one of which symbolizes my younger self, complete with the hair highlights I recall to have once favored. Another mask, adorned with fragmented mirrors, represents the idea of a fractured self-image. Additionally, I produced four 3D-printed masks of myself showcasing different expressions. The intention was to establish a disconnect between the audience and the performer, fostering a voyeuristic experience. To achieve this, I incorporated CCTV cameras, evoking a sense of surveillance akin to a security guard monitoring screens for potential intruders or threats. By deliberately concealing my face, I aimed to question the concept of true self, highlighting the inherent challenge of understanding one’s feelings and thoughts. After all, my internal mental processes remain inaccessible to others. The theatrical appeal and use of masks and performance addresses a heavy topic while exploring notions of play in my work.
Alina Chamro
Painting and Drawing
Game Start
18″ x 15″
sand sculpture
2023
Description:
Alina Chamro is a Painting and Drawing major who has a background in finance and real estate. She recently returned to university to pursue her childhood dream of creating art. Through this degree, she is regaining her foothold in her own life, and she feels as if is rediscovering her true self. This sculpture acts as an ambiguous relic, frozen in time between the era of technological advances and of the world apocalypse. This sculpture of a game controller made of sand, which in of itself is related to notions of time through the hourglass, leaves viewers with questions rather than answers. It becomes ambiguous whether it was crafted in ancient times or if it is a greeting from the distant future warning us of a possible catastrophe. The use of sand creates an interactive element for viewers. Audience members are confronted with choices when observing this controller; they could feel it and touch the sand, imagine stepping on it; and see the cracks and a fallen piece off the shape, uncovering inside of the sand casket a modern game controller.
Childhood Quilt
40×30 in
acrylic paints and graphite pencil
2023
Description:
In Childhood Quilt, two images are juxtaposed against one-another. The large colourful background contrasts the smaller graphite figure. The bright landscape is a representation of my childhood memories, which often incorporated my mother’s hobby of making quilts. For me, this echoes the warm feeling of the intimate world of my inner child. The bird’s eye perspective recalls my childhood dreams of flying over the land, where there were no existing limits. The varying scale and elephants echo childlike dreams. The quilt represents a sense of home, as it is comforting and it symbolizes a safe place. The figure, representing an adult, is isolated from the rest of the image and devoid of any colours. We do not see his face, thus his emotions are uncertain. Perhaps he is sad, perhaps he’s wondering, or perhaps he is simply watching. Perhaps, the viewer is left to question the storyline, thus creating our own narrative.
Jean-Philippe Poirier
Visual Arts, Art Education
Autel 45, ou monter et descendre un escalier ad-finitum
39 minutes and 15 seconds
Video Performance
2024
Description:
Jean-Philippe Poirier is an Art Education student with a performance art practice based on magic, repetition, and walking. He developed this practice during the pandemic throughout his drawing classes held at Concordia. “In this recorded performance piece, I build a shrine using human-made objects and leaves found on site. As I walked up and down the stairwell located in one of the staircases of the Papineau underpass, I began grabbing objects one at a time and began building the shrine on the rest area between the flights of stairs. Each object was then placed delicately onto the cyanotype papers, which were placed in a circle. I used cyanotypes in order to capture the essence of the objects that were used to build the shrine. In addition to the sound of the steps and my breathing, there was the sound of the cars, the wind and conversations that appeared throughout the performance, adding another layer of materiality, which added some sense of the unexpected to the otherwise repeated actions performed. At one point during the performance, I entered the circle; thus extending its magic around me, protecting myself from the coldness of the outside.” (poirier, 2024)
Mujer Platanito
Studio Arts, Art Education
Baby, Why do you hide from me?
Dimensions vary
performance, photography, lesson plan
Fall 2022
Description:
Baby, Why Do You Hide From Me? Is a series of portraits which depicts the artist transforming into an alter ego. The viewer is asked to see the artist and themselves from various perspectives, in order to question how identity and gender can be more of a malleable performance rather than a fixed concept. The audience is welcome to manipulate the piece by changing the order of the portraits displayed on the wall.
Andrea Rosati
Art Education, Studio Arts
Untitled
14” x 11” (4-6 pieces)
Collection of multimedia collages
2024
Description:
Andrea Rosati (he, him) is a multidisciplinary artist and educator currently exploring themes of childhood, play, and abundance through a lens of gender expression within his practice. “As an ongoing investigation of play within the restraints of passing time, this body of work captures the feelings, emotions and essence of each month as they come. Dedicated to a lost childhood, the puzzle pieces of distorted images rebuild the vacant toy box that exists within my soul. The child that resides within me is unfamiliar with many of the characters and narratives displayed, but maybe with another sticker, she too will learn.” Freed from the burdening fear of permanence, an older, deeper and distant voice assures her to adhere to the shiny foiled sticker.
Similar to lessons and months, there will be many more to come.
Jenna Wilson
Visual Arts
A Dream
Dimensions vary
Digital drawing, photography, wool sculpting
2023
Description:
Jenna Wilson is a visual artist interested in exploring the ties between nature, climate, and femininity through painting and sculptures. Considering how we respond to nature, and situate ourselves within it, is an important part of her practice. She is interested in depicting organic forms in an abstracted representation while incorporating ideas of feminine objects/presence within a natural landscape. Their practice involves not only traditional oil paints and soft sculptures, but ceramics and fibers as well. The helmet and chainmail garment were typically worn in Medieval wars. By wearing this historical garment, I am reinterpreting the act of fighting in a war, which is a very sobering experience. Instead of being a depiction of an actual war, I decided to use these elements to revive the childlike wonders embedded in creative play. The wearable pieces are documented in an imaginary landscape drawing. The wearer, within this dream-like space, creates art through their actions in the drawing.
Adia Massé
Fine Arts, Sociology
Clowned Around
30 in x 40 in
oil painting and mixed media on canvas
2023
Description:
Clowned Around is a double self-portrait exploring subversive expectations of playfulness. Adia Masse explores the meaning of play through the process of creation, and the deprecating representation of self, characterized through the exaggerated use of absurdity within the sad clown paradox. This painting embodies the unknown and the intriguing territory of play through materially exploring bright neon colours and experimenting with the effects of using recycled material such as collage, yarn, and a mirror. Despite the character’s inner turmoil, the light-hearted use of colour distracts the viewer from the overwhelming message of invasive consumerism hidden within the collage parallel. With the yarn acting as a thread of distortion of the mirror’s reflection of the perceived “true self,” such short periods of distracted satisfaction bring us to realize distress of the mind is “no matter to clown around.”
Following our successful 13th edition, the InARTE Journal wished to further explore the playful aspects that emerged in last year’s issue. For our 14th issue, we strived to give a space for artists to engage with the idea of incorporating play in their artistic practices. We desired for various art forms to intersect with each other and uplift each other under our collecting theme of play. This year, our selected artists have demonstrated a critical understanding of how play can be used to address a variety of subject matter.
The InARTE Journal would not be where it is without our prior executive members and the support from the Art Education department. I am deeply thankful to our 2023 Chief Editor Pansy Kostoulias for mentoring me, and to Kathleen Vaughan, our faculty advisor for assisting the team in the development of the 2024 issue. I want to thank our current executive team, Jessie Withey, Morgane Bernard, Sonya Adelman, and Mia Jordotovsky, for their wonderful contributions and dedication to the journal in order to make this issue possible. We also give thanks to FASA (Fine Arts Student Alliance) for their funding, to Queer Concordia for their generous art supply donation, and to Le Frigo Vert and The Hive Cafe for welcoming us in their space to host our events.