PAST EVENT
fORUM: Vanessa Parent
17 November 2022 6pmRSVP to Join us at the Gallery Conjuring Resonance: Scrying Feminist Pasts “I can’t break with my resignation and subordination (…) if I don’t find in other women as well my desire to get out, to attack, to destroy…”—Anonymous Anarcho-Feminist, Italy, 1979 Art historian Vanessa Parent elaborates on the metaphor of the scryer in […]
PAST EVENT
fORUM: Sebastian De Line with Qanita Lilla
10 November 2022 6pmListening to the Vault On the surface, the museum vault is a storage unit and a place of sanitized preservation. But it embodies an unseen reality. It is where Indigenous and African Ancestors (remains and cultural belongings) live. It is a home, not of light, warmth, and intimacy above ground but a bunker—an underground address […]
PAST EVENT
Before Law: Launch Party with Performance by Oliver Husain
10 December 2022 7pmMercer Union is thrilled to host the launch of Before Law, an ambitious web-based project by artists Sharlene Bamboat and Alexis Kyle Mitchell (Bamboat | Mitchell) featuring the work of more than a dozen contemporary artists, writers, poets, and thinkers. For one night only, we’ll be transforming Mercer Union in celebration of the bugs and […]
PAST EVENT
Video Walkthrough: Scryer in the Archive
15 October 2022 12amAimée Zito Lema gives a virtual tour of her solo exhibition, Scryer in the Archive. Taking as a starting point her family’s experience of living in Argentina during the political turmoil of the 70s, the artist shares her process of working with the material memory of paper, and reflects on how the photographic image traces […]
PAST EVENT
The African Desperate with Martine Syms
9 November 2022 6pmEvent begins at 6:30PM EST The Canadian premiere of Martine Syms’ film, The African Desperate (2022) is accompanied by a virtual Q&A with the director, moderated by programmer Nataleah Hunter-Young. Newly minted MFA Palace Bryant — effectively played by artist Diamond Stingily — has survived the white chaos of art school in Upstate New York […]
PAST EVENT
fORUM: Harold Offeh
18 October 2022 6pmLed by artist Harold Offeh, this workshop playfully explores the potential of the camera, the smartphone, and the selfie stick to mediate our experience of the body through the expressions our actions and gestures transmit in the recorded image. Connections between the body, photography, and archival reproduction present in Aimée Zito Lema’s exhibition are extended […]
PAST EVENT
fORUM: Giulia Damiani
7 October 2022 1pmLe Nemesiache in 1970s and 1980s Naples: a gallery tour, group reading, and conversation between Giulia Damiani and Helena Reckitt “WE DENOUNCE the violence which deprived ourselves of our bodies, of our expressions and of our extensions. CREATIVITY IS POLITICAL, it is life, routine, erotics, in harmony with nature and the cosmos.” — Le Nemesiache, […]
PAST EVENT
SUMMER CLOSURE
27 August 2022 12am - 5 September 2022 11pmThe gallery is closed to the public while we install our fall exhibition, Aimée Zito Lema’s commissioned project, Scryer in the Archive; we will resume regular gallery hours on 17 September. Mercer Union’s office will be closed for summer holidays from 27 August to 5 September. During our closure, you can reach us via email […]
PAST EVENT
Video Walkthrough: Evidence
9 August 2022 10amGuest curator Amy Zion gives a virtual tour of Evidence, a group exhibition featuring the work of artists Brian Belott, Petrit Halilaj, Ulrike Müller, Oscar Murillo, and Alanis Obomsawin. Speaking to each project in the exhibition, Zion reflects on the artists’ foregrounding of art by children in their practices, and the profound insights that children’s art can offer […]
PAST EVENT
Artist Afternoons
18 August 2022 5pm - 7pmSave the date! Our community social, Artist Afternoons, returns this August. We invite artists, friends, peers and neighbours to join us on the patio, and take in our summer exhibitions with good company. Gather around Shellie Zhang’s SPACE commission, A day passes like a year: Ode to Summer, and catch the final days of our summer […]
PAST EVENT
Video Walkthrough: 45th Parallel
26 April 2022 12amLawrence Abu Hamdan gives a virtual tour of his solo exhibition, 45th Parallel. Speaking to his interest in the Haskell Free Library and Opera House, the artist gives us a glimpse into the stories told in his commissioned film, and reflects on what they tell us about permeable borders and impermeable laws. 2021-22 […]
PAST EVENT
SESSION: Suneil Sanzgiri
30 April 2022 12pmREGISTER TO ATTEND Artist and filmmaker Suneil Sanzgiri invites audiences to collectively unpack and collaboratively explore questions around borders, nationalism, identity, and state-based violence. Prompted by a passage from Harsha Walia’s book Border & Rule and one of Sanzgiri’s own short films, this wide-ranging and informal conversation will look at how the moving image might […]
PAST EVENT
fORUM: Lawrence Abu Hamdan with Tina Sherwell
5 May 2022 11amLawrence Abu Hamdan joins art historian Tina Sherwell for a conversation engaging the film and exhibition 45th Parallel (2022) to discuss the challenge and opportunity of creating work across borders. Download the PDF transcript here — Lawrence Abu Hamdan (born in 1985, Amman, Jordan) is a “Private Ear.” His interest in sound and […]