Tag: Tejpal S. Ajji

Canada

Tejpal S. Ajji is a Malton, Ontario-based artist whose ongoing investigations of the “invisible structures” of genetics, gravity, airborne disease, and government bureaucracy have led to an interest in social engineering processes. Development in government subsidized housing, immigration integration and colonial policy are explored from personal and broader cultural experience.

FADO in cooperation with Toronto Free Gallery, is pleased to announce the latest instalment of its ongoing Emerging Artists series. In Enter-gration, curated by Nahed Mansour, a roster of local performance artists explore immigration issues.

ARTISTS
Bojana Videkanic
Idil Mussa
Jesus Mora
Karilynn Ming Ho
Rachel Gorman
Reena Katz
Rita Camacho Lomeli
Tejpal S. Ajji

North America is increasingly joining global debates on immigration as new racisms surface. Borders and boundaries are being redefined in the name of security, as movement is facilitated for some groups while others are excluded. The question is who benefits from this security regime? Who is left out? This event is a small step to building our collective awareness of the demands of movement, expectations of submission, and the struggle to fulfill challenges faced by millions with precarious status daily.

Curator Nahed Mansour writes:

Crossing the border into North American society is not a simple act for immigrants and refugees. [“It should be hard! We need safety! How else are we going to know who’s coming into our country?”] In curating Enter-gration, I’m trying to break down these well-worn myths. [“Why?”] I intend to explore ways in which integration through assimilation is a tactic aimed to make visible minorities invisible. [“But we have multiculturalism, don’t we?”].

PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE

March 1, 7:00pm
Crossing Borders/Crossing Bodies by Bojana Videkanic
Illegal Migration by Jesus Mora

March 2, 7:00pm
Transit by Rachel Gorman
Suhbuhk [Lesson] by Tejpal S. Ajji

March 3, 4:00pm
Knot by Idil Mussa
Crossing Borders/Crossing Bodies by Bojana Videkanic
Order to Remedy by Reena Katz

March 4, 2:00pm
Urban Meditations by Rita Camacho Lomeli
Cowboy BeBop (Ode To My Daddy) by Karilynn Ming Ho
Illegal Migration by Jesus Mora

ARTISTS
Gyrl Grip
Irene Loughlin
Jess Dobkin
Tejpal S. Ajji

Curated by Paul Couillard

FADO presents four performance environments dealing with the sense of taste in this final ‘gustatotry’ component of the Five Holes series.

Taste is perhaps the most ‘personal’ of all the senses. It is both primal—providing the impulses that drive consumption—and individualized: one person’s desire is another’s poison. While the word ‘taste’ is often associated with the concept of aesthetic discernment, Matters of Taste places its emphasis on a specific, visceral definition of taste: the perception of flavour and texture that takes place inside our mouths.

This series explores the implications of a sense that operates through the placement of foreign material inside one’s body. Matters of Taste is not concerned with the familiar social terrain of banquets and dinner parties so much as the links between physical sensation, unconscious/conscious drives, and our mouths as a point of contact with the external world. How does one orchestrate a performance for another’s mouth? What are the dynamics that seduce, persuade or convince others to put things in their mouths? What are we or aren’t we willing to put in our mouths? What intentions are bound up in the impulse to stimulate one’s taste buds? What does our sense of taste reveal about our internal desires and external projections?

PROGRAM INCLUDES

Kobe by Gyrl Grip
Liquid Skyline by Irene Loughlin
Lactation Station Breast Milk Bar by Jess Dobkin
The Oral Projects by Tejpal S. Ajji