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.”
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.
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.”
Barbara Ottevaere
5th year, Ceramics
The Road
10.5 x 8.5 inches
paper
2023
Description:
En filigrane de ce collage qui semble à priori représenter toute la fougue et l’insouciance de l’enfance se trouve l’élan que chacun porte en soi durant sa prime jeunesse. Il me semble que c’est cet élan qu’il faut tenter de retrouver lorsque, devenu adulte, la vie nous fait traverser des moments difficiles. En personnifiant la route qui jalonne notre vie en une silhouette à la fois joueuse et frondeuse, j’ai voulu mettre l’accent sur l’importance du désir comme élément vital.
At first glance, this collage seems to evoke the passion and carelessness of childhood that finds its momentum through our early years of life. It seems to me that we must find our way back to this feeling once we’ve entered adulthood, as life can sometimes bring us difficult moments. By personifying the road, which represents our journeys through life, into a joyful silhouette who appears rebellious and playful, I wanted to emphasize the importance of desire as a vital element in life.
nini
2nd year, Studio Arts
learning to fly
32″ x 40″ x 1.5″
fibers (wool roving-felting, wool yarn-crochet, poly-fill, and found objects)
2022
Description:
There’s a recurring spirit of playfulness in my practice and often imagery that may be associated with a lighthearted childlikeness. With my hands and fibers, I build the key to the world I want to live in. Whenever someone puts on these wings, the entrance of a world abundant in care and kindness reveals itself. In this space, the one who believes in patiently waiting for the wind reaches higher heights than the one who can only flap their wings the fastest; the one who contributes what they can is fuller than the one who takes it all. I hope to create this place, learn in this place, and make this place my home.
Andrea Chenier
2nd year, Studio Arts and Art History
Revival
60 x 20 inches
oil on canvas
2023
Description:
My painting Revival is about the hope that the changing of the seasons brings. I and many others struggle with winter and the seasonal depression it brings along. In this painting I explore the feeling of being saved when the snow begins to melt, and the trees start budding. The figure on the left of the painting represents myself or anyone else who struggles with winter like I do. Their clothing is wrinkled, and they appear tired, weighed down as they rest on the figure to the right, which represents the coming of spring. This figure appears happy and wears a pretty summer dress, painted in bright pinks, blues and yellows. The two figures clutch each other’s hands tightly. For the figure on the left, it is because they desperately need the smiling spring woman. The smiling woman clutches back, appearing happy to be a saviour for this person. Spring is my impetus for joy.
Levana Katz
6th year, Studio Arts
Swarm
collection of pieces ranging between 7.5″ x 20″ and 4″ x 12″
screenprint on paper, beeswax
2022
Description:
Swarm is part of an ongoing exploration of Hebrew calligraphy as a reference for my drawing practice. Hebrew calligraphy is an important part of my connection to both my Jewish heritage and my family, as it is a skill my mother passed on to me.
In these silkscreen prints, the fluid lines of the Hebrew letter “Lamed” (the first letter of my name) constitute the bodies of dragonflies, my mother’s favourite insect. In Jewish Mysticism, dragonflies represent transformation. While the Hebrew letters are reimagined as dragonflies, a symbol of continuity and change, they are encased in wax, a static material. The organic forms of the prints carry the tension between preservation and growth, as the final sculptures signal to a swarm of dragonflies in flight, insects encased in captivity, or a calligraphic signature.