Artist
Kristina Guison

Philippines / Canada
https://kristinaguison.net

Kristina Guison is a Manila-born, Toronto-based, Filipino-Canadian artist. She works in the realm of sculpture, installation, performance, social practices and tattoos. Her practice is an investigation of themes relating to globalization and transnational identities across geographical spaces and time (Pre-Colonial, Colonial and Post-Colonial) as they culminate in the 21st socio-cultural landscape. She is interested in identifying elements and patterns in this landscape, particularly ones that behave as catalysts and residues that simultaneously extend and limit human experience.

Performance
Weather to Store by Kristina Guison

Co-presented by FADO Performance Art Centre and SAVAC

Precarity renders the acquisition, care and disposal of an object into an emotionally loaded, calculative problem. The lifecycle of an object depends on its size, utility, affective potential and value. Where do you store grandmaā€™s fine china in a tiny rented apartment? How long do you hold on to the unique piece of metal that you dumpstered for an art project ten years ago? Does your sculpture have more value sitting on a plinth in gallery, or on a shelf in storage?

Weather to Store is a durational performance in three acts, purposely presented in no particular order. In each act a collection of objects is arranged and manipulated in a different way, and in three distinct spaces: a gallery, the outdoors and a self-storage container. The sequence of time, the utility of the objects and the designated spaces that these objects and actions occupy are displaced and dis-jointed, mediating on and revealing how context influences the various object’s shifting and impermanent value. 

SAVAC (South Asian Visual Arts Centre) is a non-profit, artist-run centre in Canada dedicated to increasing the visibility of culturally diverse artists by curating and exhibiting their work, providing mentorship, facilitating professional development and creating a community for our artists. SAVAC was founded to be an organization staffed by people of colour, committed to support the work of artists of colour.

ACT 2: Storage

May 14ā€“19 & 22ā€“23 @ 12pmā€“5pm
Bachir/Yerex Presentation Space,Ā 401 Richmond Street West

In the second act ofĀ Weather to Store, a gallery space is reframed as a typical storage locker. The artist and her exhibition take up residence in the gallery and perform ā€˜storingā€™ in situ. The artist stacks, re-orders and rearranges the art objects in the gallery-turned-storage over the course of the residency. The various configurations reveal the process through which objects are ascribed value in storage. Audience is invited to come and go during gallery hours.Ā 

ACT 1:Ā Gallery

May 24, 2018 @ 6pmā€“8pm
70 Geary Lane

Weather to StoreĀ continues outside. The artist converts a patch of space outdoors into a gallery and mounts an exhibition, delineated by tape lines drawn on the ground.The dimension of the designated space corresponds to a typical medium sized self-storage space. The exhibition isĀ comprised of unfinished, raw materials presented and sold as art objects along with functional objects hindered from exercising their potential utility.

ACT 3: Outside

Planet Storage, 1655 Dupont Street
October 11ā€“21, 2018

Weather to StoreĀ ends in a self-storage facility. The artist moves her objects for the last time into a storage locker. Opting out of preservationist logics of climate-controlled storage spaces, the artist performs the laborious process of weathering them artificially as anĀ additiveĀ and depreciating performativeĀ gesture. Presented by SAVAC in partnership with Art Spin.

Ā© Kristina Guison, Weather to Store (Act 2), 2018. Photo Henry Chan.

Performance Yellow

This fragrance opens us to the question, has the show started? It's winter, the theatre is colder than the street and the room is filled with people and all their winter smells: wet faux leather, down, too much shampoo, and beer breath. The atmosphere is a trickster. Am I late, am I early?

Top Notes

yellow mandarin, mimosa

Middle Notes

honey, chamomile, salt

Base Notes

narcissus, guaiac wood, piss, beer