Friday, January 10, 2020 to Friday, February 7, 2020
Opening Reception: Friday, January 10, 6:30-8:30pm
Featuring Patrice Renee Washington, Jude Abu Zaineh, Karen Azoulay, Florence Yee
When does the act of consumption become uncomfortable? Through elucidating different materials, means of production, and cultural conventions underpinning food structures, Through Clenched Teeth brings together practices that critically adresss food politics under Western hegemony. 4 artists use several raw nourishment materials (food scraps, clay, flowers, and biological makeup) to address latent narratives involving diaspora, racial oppression, and archeology. Through Clenched Teeth uses common food practices to provide deciphered histories elucidated visual codes explaining the integration of different political systems involved with consumption. Each practice maps specific habits of feeding, weaving through disparate histories to explain how these materials contextualize uncomfortable historical narratives. Each work oxymoronically presents non-edible ingredients as mechanisms for understanding socio-political traditions, showcasing how food economies are linked to more than just sustenance.
Karen Azoulay (b. 1977, Toronto, ON) is an interdisciplinary artist working within the intersection of sculpture, performance and video. Her work has been featured in publications such as The New York Times, The New Yorker, C Magazine, Vogue and Hyperallergic. Solo exhibitions include Essex Flowers (New York), Drew University (Madison, New Jersey), CUE Art Foundation (New York) and Mercer Union (Toronto). Recent exhibitions include Erin Stump Projects (Toronto), Simone DeSousa Gallery (Detroit), Jarvis Hall (Calgary) and Hesse Flatow (New York). Her performances have been staged at Art in General (New York), Kerry Schuss Gallery (New York), The Power Plant (Toronto) and Space Gallery (Portland, ME). She is currently based in Brooklyn.
Patrice Renee Washington is a New York based artist, born in Chicago, IL. Workingprimarily in sculpture and ceramics, her work investigates structures of race, class, andgender as they relate to the construction of identity and experience. Through use ofobjects and cultural signifiers she explores how identity can be manipulated and shapedto explore alternative understandings.She has shown in solo and group exhibitions across the United States, including soloexhibitions at both Marinaro Gallery and Underdonk Gallery in Brooklyn, NY alongwith a 2018 solo museum exhibition at The Museum of Contemporary Art Denver.Group exhibitions include shows at Jenkins Johnson Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; We BuyGold, Brooklyn, NY; Sculpture Center, Queens, NY; The Museum of ContemporaryArt Denver, Denver, CO; Zeitgeist, Nashville, TN; Abrons Art Center, New York, NY;47 Canal, New York, NY and Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts,Brooklyn, NY. She has been granted residencies at Abrons Arts Center, AndersonRanch Arts Center, Lighthouse Works, the Museum of Art and Design, and the VermontStudio Center.
Florence Yee is a 2.5 generation, Cantonese-struggling visual artist based in Tkaronto/Toronto and Tiohtià:ke/Montreal. Their interest in Cantonese-Canadian history has informed an art practice examining diasporic subjectivities through the lens of gender, racialization, queerness and language. Notable exhibitions include Sino(n)-Québécoise? at Centre Never Apart and Le Salon at Articule, as well as exhibitions at the Gardiner Museum (2019), A Space (2019), Art Mûr (2018), the Karsh-Masson Gallery (2017), Studio XX (2016). They have participated in residencies at the Gay Archives of Quebec, the John and Maggie Mitchell Art Gallery, La Galerie du Nouvel-Ontario, the Ottawa School of Art, and the Concordia Fine Arts Reading Room. In 2019, they co-founded the Institute of Institutional Critique™ with Mattia Zylak. They also a co-director of Tea Base, a grassroots collective in Tkaronto’s Chinatown run by queer East-Asians. Having graduated with a BFA from Concordia University, they are now pursuing an MFA at OCAD U in Interdisciplinary Art, Media and Design as a SSHRC recipient and Delaney Scholar. They are represented by Studio Sixty-Six. Jude Abu Zaineh (MFA, University of Windsor) is a Palestinian-Canadian multidisciplinary artist and cultural worker. Her practice relies on the use of art, food, and technology to investigate meanings of culture, displacement, diaspora, and belonging. She’s interested in ideals of home and community while working to develop aesthetics rooted in her childhood and upbringing in a muslim environment in the Middle East. Abu Zaineh has exhibited her work in: São Luis and Lisbon, Portugal; Mexico City; NYC; Toronto, and Windsor, Canada. She recently completed a residency with the Ontario Science Centre and MOCA Toronto (Canada) and is currently pursuing her PhD at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY. Image: Untitled, Digital Image, 2019, Patrice Renee Washington