Join Mona Filip for an in-depth curatorial tour examining the themes and artistic strategies in the new exhibition, THE COUNTER/SELF.
About
Navigating the complexities of selfhood, agency, and representation, THE COUNTER/SELF brings together a group of Indigenous and diasporic Canadian artists who create and embody imaginative alter-egos to examine, perform, and subvert identity constructs and politics. Through the use of make-up and elaborate costumes, the artists transform their own appearance and stage layered photographic, video, mixed media, and sculptural scenes that destabilize viewers’ presumed realities and points of reference to expose prejudices with regards to gender, race, ethnicity, and nationhood. Informed by personal and cultural histories entwined within the artists’ life experiences, their counter/selves advance divergent perspectives that upend deceitful national legacies and social expectations.
About the Curator
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Mona Filip
Mona Filip is Curator at the Art Museum at the University of Toronto. Originally from Bucharest, Romania, Filip received her BFA from the Corcoran School of Art, Washington DC, and her MFA from SUNY at Buffalo. Previously Director/Curator of the Koffler Gallery, she led the organization’s visual art program for fifteen years, producing over forty exhibitions and off-site projects. She developed first public gallery shows in Toronto of prominent Canadian artists such as Ghazaleh Avarzamani, Sameer Farooq, Karen Tam, and José Luis Torres, and first Canadian exhibitions of acclaimed international artists Raphaël Zarka (France) and Christian Hidaka (UK), Sigalit Landau (Israel), Esther Shalev-Gerz (France), Isabel Rocamora (UK/Spain), Iara Freiberg (Brazil/Argentina) Adi Nes (Israel), and Joshua Neustein (USA).
