2014 Contact Photography Festival: Part 1

Starting with the Self
Identity in Material Self: Performing the Other Within at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art

by Magdalyn Asimakis

 

Artists: David Favrod, Charles Fréger, Hendrik Kerstens, Namsa Leuba, Meryl McMaster, Dominique Rey, Tomoko Sawada, Mary Sibande

On an evening that seemed to be the first of spring in Toronto, the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art celebrated the opening of their exhibitions “Material Self: Performing the Other Within,” and “In Character: Self Portrait of the Artist as Another” for the launch of the Contact Photography Festival. This year, Contact is exploring the theme of identity and its relationship to photography, which Contact Artistic Director Bonnie Rubenstein describes as “deeply connected.”  In a society obsessed with images, this theme feels fantastically relevant and endlessly layered, acting as a lens through which to view these works. With photography in over 200 venues this year, 13 exhibitions are exploring this theme in different ways.

The exhibitions at MoCCA are two primary exhibitions for Contact, and are in a sense a starting point for the festival as they explore identity by beginning with concepts of the self. The larger exhibition, Material Self: Performing the Other Within, features eight international artists who create aesthetic propositions through photography as a means of coming face to face with their identity in terms of self, ancestral and cultural history, and the concept of their “other within.”

These artists set their portraits in specific environments, and use props and self-fashioning to visually construct narratives of identity. Namsa Leube’s series, “Ya Kala Ben” explores African identity and western perceptions of it through the heavy use of props, costume, and contemporary fashion in various environments. Leube embodies this cultural friction as the Swiss-born daughter of a Guinea woman, and her striking photographs at once question how we create identity while suggesting commonalities in human existence. Another series, Tomoko Sawada’s “OMIAI ♡, consists of 30 formal, studio portraits of the artist emulating different women through dress and pose. By taking on these various personas, Sawada not only explores the Japanese tradition of circulating these omiai photographs in hopes of finding a husband for the subjects, but also explores tensions between outward fashioning, inward character, and environment.

As suggested by the term “other within,” the identities explored by the artists are based on delving deeply into their individual selves, and attempt to uncover elements of identity that can seem invisible to society. These artists take the seeds of their “other within,” and appropriate them with a visual language that reveals the complexity of identity. Dominique Rey speaks about moving between places of strength and vulnerability in order to let her “other within” emerge. This sense of emergence is certainly evident in her photographs, in particular her use of nylons which she stuffs with materials to alter her body shape, and suggest something beneath the surface attempting to be reborn, or break through an exterior barrier.

Though the artists included in this exhibition look to history and ancestry to construct identity, their perspectives are not documentary or historical. Their work is exploratory, propositional, and contemporary, and challenges others to consider themselves in the same way. To see the issue of identity so deeply rooted in the oeuvre of even just these eight international artists suggests that we are at a moment where this discussion is relevant. Perhaps we will all come out of May a bit more self-aware, and a bit less selfie.

 

Magdalyn Asimakis lives in Toronto, Ontario and works as a research assistant in the curatorial department at the Art Gallery of Ontario, she is a regular contributor to BlackFlash Magazine and our Contact Photography Festival correspondent.