Issue 14

Letter from the team

Adia Massé

Mujer Platanito

Skkandaloza

Andrea Rosati

Jean-Philippe Poirier

Alina Chamro

Nesreen Galal

Jenna Wilson

PDF of Issue 14 Magazine Download

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.”

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.

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.”

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.

January calendar collage with a cat trying to catch a fish and a man piloting a toy vehicle that does not appear on the collage and two ladies in baseball apparel dance around a bonfire

February calendar collage with various queer kissing depictions and also a horse and a policeman

sad looking man holding garbage like it is a small fragile animal while sitting cross-legged in an alley there is also milk on the floor and a bag of chips people really need to clean up after themselves montreal we must do better

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)

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.

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.

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.