Syrus Marcus Ware | 2068: Touch Change
Both an archive and a speculation, set 50 years in the future, this new exhibition is curated by alumna Vanessa Kwan.
grunt gallery | 116-350 E 2nd Ave
Opening Reception | Thursday, November 1, 7:00-10:00pm
Curated by ECU alum Vanessa Kwan, the exhibition 2068: Touch Change is both an archive and a speculation. Beginning 50 years in the future, this new exhibition by Toronto-based artist and activist Syrus Marcus Ware proposes an archive whose "holdings" act as a meeting ground for artists and activists across time and space.
The exhibition has three main components: a series of large-scale graphite portraits drawn on paper and directly on the walls, a speculative text and a disseminated printed work that documents materials gathered and accessed in the artists’ research process. The portraits - in many ways the centrepiece of the exhibition - are created through a complex process of visiting and revisiting images and interviews with historic and present-day BIPOC (Black, Indigenous or People of Colour) activist communities.
Ware’s investment in the archive is overlaid with a parallel interest in forms of speculative fiction, and he speaks eloquently about how he envisions his research and installations as ways of creating a space where activists and artists of different generations are brought together. Ware, like Butler, invites us to consider change as a constant, and hope as an ever-expanding network of relations.