Two UBCO MFA thesis Exhibitions May-June 2023

ZOORKHANEH_Nasim Pirhadi 

I Died as a Mineral_Heraa Khan

It has been approximately a year since I first met Nasim Pirhadi and Heraa Kahn, two talented artists immersed in
the early stages of their MFA Program. Over time,  I witnessed their artistic processes unfold, filled with inquiries,
contemplations, and extensive research, gradually shaping their works into remarkable presentations.

For this year's UBCO MFA Exhibition, the Lake Country Art Gallery has been divided into two distinct exhibition spaces. The first space showcases Heraa Kahn's collection of miniature paintings, delicately arranged on the gallery walls, gently illuminated to highlight each individual piece. Through these paintings, Kahn invites viewers into a contemplative journey exploring themes of the natural world, human interactions, and the ensuing climate crisis. The exhibition, titled 'I Died as a Mineral,' draws inspiration from Rumi's poem of the same name, perhaps symbolizing the cycle of life and incorporating materials that mirror this connection. Kahn's intricate paintings serve as cautionary tales, offering viewers profound insights, meanings, and interpretations of Rumi's poem.

While standing amidst Kahn's exhibition, one's attention is drawn to a small archway that leads to another space at the rear of the gallery. Passing through, visitors enter Nasim Pirhadi's installation titled 'Zoorkhaneh,' which translates to 'House of Strength'—a traditional gymnasium for men. Pirhadi has ingeniously transformed the room into an immersive installation, combining video, photography, sounds, scents, and exercise-related objects. The air is filled with the sweet fragrance of sugar and rose water. Traditionally reserved for men, the wooden equipment within the space is now open to all, as Pirhadi invites diverse participation in this exhibition. Notably, Pirhadi has recreated the apparatuses using sugar, imbuing the piece with a sense of heightened weight and transparency—an innovative reinterpretation of traditional beliefs and values concerning women's rights, human rights, and societal roles.
 
For five days, I observed Heraa Kahn and Nasim Pirhadi meticulously navigate the gallery space, constructing walls, selecting paint colours, contemplating support structures, lighting arrangements, soundscapes, and strategic placement of their works. Every decision was made with utmost care, thoughtfulness, and thorough consideration, leaving no aspect to chance. Their unwavering commitment and hard work was admirable.

In these tumultuous times we find ourselves in, these exhibitions hold tremendous significance, encouraging us to stay informed about global affairs. The gallery has produced two exhibition catalogues, one for each artist, to showcase their thesis works. The presence of Heraa Kahn and Nasim Pirhadi's art within the Lake Country Art Gallery is a true privilege for us—the gallery, the Lake Country community, and all those who have the opportunity to engage with their remarkable work.
​
Wanda Lock
Curator

State(s) of Being  

The fact that women are still underrepresented in the art world of today is  such a disappointment. I wish I could say it is also a surprise. Much like the  civil rights movement of the 60s, after the height of the women’s movement  and the institutional respect and acceptance of feminist art during the  1970s, as a culture we had the hand-wiping attitude of a problem that had  been solved. But not so. As with the BLM movement, the COVID pandemic  revealed that not much had really changed within the gendered  expectations and experiences of our society. Although the workforce  included a greater number of women than in decades past, with most  working full-time, women were still, for the most part, responsible for  household and childcare duties. 

The pandemic removed the illusion of independent, self-sufficient, career driven womanhood by revealing the weight of all the myriad home-life  related chores that had been outsourced to other less-privileged women.  The same old sexist framework was still there all along, hidden beneath a  comfy padding of dollar bills. Outwardly, for a couple of decades, it truly  looked as though things had changed. A career and child both! A family and  a fulfilling job! We can have it all. Look how far we have come. The  unfortunate truth was that the mirage of freedom and equality was only  available because of paid additional support from other women. 

It is this hidden skeleton of disparity that the art world too, is built upon. The  social and political framework of capitalism favours a certain type of worker.  A hustler, a grinder, someone who is willing to go big or go home. The  system is built for making money, and the faster the better. Scale up. In  fact, things truly have been scaling up, even material things like houses,  cars, grocery stores, family vacations, post-secondary education. This is  where unregulated capitalism brings us, and it is unsustainable. 

What does this have to do with the art world? Well, like any other industry,  art is attached to a market, and as we know, the free market  prioritizes economic growth above all else. An artist who is also a mother is  in most cases working the ‘second shift’. That is, as detailed above, they  are most likely to be the ones in charge of the domestic sphere, including  the children. This reality does not jive well with a bombastic studio practice  built around a bohemian, foot-loose lifestyle, which is the antiquated myth  that still persists around the creation of artwork.

​Who are the ones who can more readily embody this ideal? Young men, or older men who have  remained in this role throughout their careers. There are exceptions to this  of course, but I am generalizing to make a point. It is a matter of time and focus, and any artist who is also a mother is in  short supply of these two essential ingredients. Who are the artists making  it to all the evening gallery openings and artist talks? The meeting and  greeting? Who are the artists with studio spaces separate from their homes  and stuffed full of work? Who are the artists with mentors? Someone who  looks like them? Where is the shop talk taking place? The evolving artistic  dialogue is not happening at the family dinner table or in bed before  storytime. Or with the other parents at school drop-off and pick-up. How  can you be in two places at once? It is hard to contort oneself to fit a mold  that is not designed for you. It takes extraordinary measures and a will of  steel to climb a man-made mountain. Mercifully, one of the defining  characteristics of an artist is someone who finds a way to be truly  themselves, bending the world to their inner compass, letting the world in  on how they see things, how things feel in their skin. This caveat to the  chimerical role in society of the capital ‘A’ artist may be the saving grace of  the profession.  

Thank goodness (goddess?) for the progressive thinking of those mothers  and artists who are able to find a way to create and be visible in the art  scene by bending the social strictures, shattering outdated myths, finding  loopholes and forging new paths. It takes exceptional strength of  determination and motivation to keep in the game and succeed. The  women chosen for the exhibition The State(s) of Being at the Lake Country  Art Gallery - Janine Hall, Joice M. Hall, Lindsay Lorraine, Mary Smith  McCulloch, and Rhonda Neufeld - have proven themselves to be artists  and mothers who are supernaturally spirited. They have decided to want  something for themselves and they are not afraid to take it. Culture and  society benefit from these women. We need their voices and their vision.  They are wanted and needed, not only by their children and family but by  their art community at large, and the world beyond. 

Bree Apperley is a Canadian mother, artist, designer and writer based in Syilx territory (Okanagan, B.C.). She holds degrees in both Fine Art and Design Art, from the Alberta College of Art + Design and Concordia University respectively. For more information about the author visit https://breeapperley.com/ and on instagram @fwuitbowl.

the principles of object obsession and our undoing

Hyperobject in A Quake in Beingis "things that are massively distributed in time and space relative to humans." The relativity of 'our' existence—the 'human' existence—rests upon our innate compulsion to build tools to respond to our ever-changing environments. This is the human condition1. Timothy Morton continues to describe this object-making response through the term hyperobject as "long-lasting product['s] of direct human manufactur[ing]. […] a sum of all the whirring machinery of capitalism." So how do we curate our spaces with equipment, gear, goods, and junk? Are these relics of innovation everlasting or short-lived? Do these mass-produced materials contribute to the earth’s ecology positively? Can there be ways we can reassess our relationship with these materials’adaptability?

Principles of Enclosure looks to address these questions under the theme “functional obsolescence.” Artists Gambletron, Johnny Forever and zevtiefenback specifically engage with various objects,“usefulness” or “desirability” based on their outdated design feature that is difficult to alter.In this way, you get an overall sense that the artists are critiquing capitalist consumption by incorporating their relationships to production and distribution to its impossibility of being equitably sustainable. By engaging with object-making in the industrial realm, they reveal those objects' precarity.

Objects such as:

 plastic columns: a contention to the contemporary depiction from classic historical architecture. Alabaster in       material and embellished by a Corinthian top are redefined by a mass-produced plastic form that becomes             figurative once a latex sheet is draped on top.

        antennas are dismembered from their radio bodies while their bellies are dissected and reconnected to other           parts to form a new way of relevance.

               noise: the voices of these objects speak through static utterances. A sort of nostalgic way of listening                          where one used to scan radio waves for other signs of life.

                     discarded wood is repurposed in a self-reflexive way to stimulate our relationship with trees and                                   extractive pursuits with Land.

                           Photographic documents of property ownership become memories of bygone eras where security                                  was somewhat obtainable yet unsustainable.

To come across these objects, equipment, gear, goods, and junk within a gallery space forces the viewer to reintroduce themselves. The artwork’s technology or representation can be nostalgic for some or maybe totally unfamiliar. A pendulum swing between relativity to irrelevance. It is arguable to say that Principles of Enclosure is time-based and ephemeral. It is also arguablethat these works assert life on their own—beyond a human focus perspective that usually projects object relevance based on sharing space. However, these objects, equipment, gear, goods, and junk continue to exist when we are gone. When ‘we’ are gone forever, these works will remain here. Some can erode. Some will not.

Michaela Bridgemohan Guest Writer

1 This is in reference to the human history of constructing objects and tools to our social spaces. However, I want to acknowledge that other animals such as crows, ravens, and other birds also make tools as to strategize hunting and foraging. .

The COVID-19 pandemic has compelled us to isolate in ways most have never before experienced. Not only have we
avoided interactions with strangers, but for extended periods of time, we avoided interactions with friends and family. While this isolation limited our geographic perspectives, halting travel and focusing our attentions on immediate regional challenges, the work of artists Shannon Lester and Endrené Shepherd, in contrast, turned outward to the world beyond their reach, and inward to a shared collective unconscious.

In merging literal and fantastical elements, Sea of Love invites us into a relationship with the land and its creatures that is both psychic and material. These works assert that a landscape is not simply a location on Earth, but a place in our imagination.

Shannon Lester is a Canadian interdisciplinary artist with a focus on painting and drag performance. In Sea of Love, his work explores queer embodiment and a queer ecology that imagines a hopeful future of community and care. This optimism is embodied in the sensual imagery of Lester’s work. In “Two Spirit Love,” male-bodied figures embrace; in “Paradis,” an amphibious human approaches a sea star with gentle curiosity; in “Life Will Find a Way,” a kneeling woman lovingly holds a fish in her palms.

While Shannon Lester offers a broad view of a complex ecology, both literal and fantastical, Endrené Shepherd
imagines the intimate space within the palms—small human figures recline inside a jellyfish or a bottle lost at sea and come eye-to-eye with a curious fish. Shepherd works primarily in acrylic, but she first began painting when her grandfather introduced her to watercolour. The influence of this medium, with its inherent sense of movement and unpredictability, is evident in the gestural nature of Shepherd’s subjects: in one painting, a seal somersaults in the canopy of a kelp forest, and in another, a dolphin, dappled by light, soars toward an unseen surface. Quiet landscapes move the eye skyward to similarly ephemeral subjects, such as when a coral reef dissolves into an abstraction of sun and water or pinking clouds float, for now, above a low sun. In this way, the paintings ask us to be present in these moments, which are indeed fleeting.

This temporality is evoked in many of Lester’s works, too. The wreckage of human ambition sits unassuming in the background, like a ghost or a memory—a barnacled skiff, forgotten gateways, skeletons, overgrown dwellings. While these images evoke an end of civilization, they contrast ironically with the profusion of underwater life, implying instead an optimistic future, and that, despite the sad forecasts, life indeed will find a way.

But what future is imagined here for humankind?

The literature of natural science has historically marginalized queer/trans bodies, and the supposed “unnaturalness” of queer sexuality and gender has been used to justify the persecution of LGBTQ2 individuals. In this way, queerness is often marginalized in the context of representations of nature. In Strange Natures: Futurity, Empathy, and the Queer Ecological Imagination, Nicole Seymour explains how this has resulted in, at its most extreme, a perception of “Nature” (rather than the “process of naturalization”) as a threat to queer integrity. Lester responds by centering not only queer sexuality in his depictions of Nature, but a queer fluidity in our material and psychic experiences of place. By rendering the sensual body as a fusion of both imagined/fantastical and material ways of being, Lester asserts a queerness unshackled by historical notions of naturalness. And so, fantastical human forms—mermen, sea witch, fairies—swim joyfully. They look boldly toward the viewer or recline sensually in a reef; the bodies most alive in this world are those of our imaginations. In this way, the paintings ask us to be more, to imagine more in our relationship with the world and each other.

Andrea Routley, 
Guest Writer

About the Artists
Shannon Lester is a visual artist and teacher based in the Okanagan since 1999. He works primarily in acrylic on
canvas and has explored topics related to gender identity and sexuality in the past. His current work has moved
more into the realms of fantasy, mysticism, surrealism and nature spirituality with a strong focus on underwater/
ocean art. Lester grew up in Newfoundland and spent six years living and teaching in Osaka, Japan where he
started the drag-based performance art collective Kiss Kiss Bang Bang in 2009. He is also a local drag personality
known as Sasha Zamolodchikova in Kelowna and entertains regularly at different venues in BC and beyond.

Endrené Shepherd, born in Vancouver and raised in the rural setting of Kaleden, BC, Endrené displayed an aptitude for art-making from an early age. She learned how to handle watercolours from her grandfather, and has made art the focal point of her life for as long as she has existed. She graduated from the Capilano College Film Studies program in 1999, and went on to get a BFA degree from UBCO in 2004. Her work has been exhibited in exhibitions locally and internationally.

About the Writer
Andrea Routley is an LGBTQ2 community and arts organizer. She is the founding editor of Plenitude, Canada’s
queer literary magazine, and currently provides the logistical support for Black Liquorice Studio, an emerging
Okanagan-based BIPOC arts collective. As an MFA candidate at UBC-Okanagan, she is developing her third book
of fiction.

​Many Artists in the Voice & Land Exhibition provided words or poems with their work, here is a selection of these in a downloadable PDF.

Catalogue Essay by Holly Ward

​
As with all of todays' living creatures, Mat Glenn and Lucas Glenn’s lived experiences simultaneously straddle the seemingly incompatible spheres of the physical and the virtual, the natural and technological, the ‘real’ and the simulated.
 
As contemporary subjects, our corporeal existence anachronistically bounds us to our physical environments, however mediated this experience and this environment might be. Performing wage-labour, crossing geographical terrain via combustion engines, consuming genetically modified plants and animals; daily interactions and activities are mediated by human systems that have completely transformed direct engagements with the physical, or ‘real’ world. And yet we rely on our bodies and on these natural systems entirely. While technocrats like Elon Musk may want us to believe otherwise, there is no viable life on Mars. We have only the real world.
 
But what is the ‘real’ world? When the distinctions between innate and artificial intelligence are increasingly difficult to discern, when ecosystems self-regulate in response to human technologies, when the rate of change for both ‘natural’ and virtual systems seems to be increasingly immeasurable, any attempt to distinguish between the ‘authentic’ and the constructed, the ‘natural’ and the unnatural, merely reflects an arcane or nostalgic world-view. The simultaneity of mass extinctions and Quantum computing seems to indicate that what exists is a hybrid, increasingly complex system currently in a state of accelerated change. Just as certain physical phenomena cannot be ascertained by human consciousness, these rates of systemic change have seemingly accelerated beyond that to which Human cultures can (or are willing to) adapt. In other words, today’s ‘real world’ is, in fact, a ‘wicked problem’1.
 
In Equipment Space, Mat Glenn and Lucas Glenn’s creative outputs recognize this wicked problem through a series of polymorphous strategies that articulate their perceived location in this contemporary context. Sculptural assemblages merging the human and non-human, animal and vegetable, digital and analogue, explore themes central to their work such as precarious labor, ecosystems, technological interfaces and hybridity.
 
Equipment Space locates our (both human and non-human) collective immersion in this hyperspace between the real and the virtual. Sculptural assemblages featuring humanoid figures, fossil-fuel powered vehicles, live plants and computer-generated fantasy worlds address the circular logics of the neoliberal technosphere (wherein ‘limitless growth’ of resource extraction and alienated labor confront the material limits of bodies and environments). Equipment Space asks us to consider the physical, material and conceptual boundaries of our worlds, the limits of our experiences, and the possibilities of our collective future.
 
 
Notes:

1. The term wicked problem refers to:

 
…a problem that is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognize. It refers to an idea or problem that cannot be fixed, where there is no single solution to the problem; and "wicked" denotes resistance to resolution, rather than evil. Another definition is "a problem whose social complexity means that it has no determinable stopping point". Moreover, because of complex interdependencies, the effort to solve one aspect of a wicked problem may reveal or create other problems.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem, last accessed Mar 7, 2021