0:01

okay we’re going to get started hello everyone and welcome to our virtual studio visit with emmanuel assahor my

0:07

name is michael magnuson i’m the new public program and outreach coordinator at the art gallery of alberta to start

0:14

this program i would like to do a land acknowledgement the aga is located in 3d6 territory in edmonton the

0:20

traditional land of a diverse indigenous peoples including the cree blackfoot metis nakota sioux iroquois

0:28

inuit and ojibwe salto anishinabe we acknowledge and extend gratitude to the

0:33

many first nations metis and inuit whose footsteps have marked these lands for generations and who continue to call

0:40

this place home today this is the third event as part of our public program for the exhibition the

0:46

scene curated by lindsey sherman and danielle siemens the scene celebrates what’s happening in

0:52

art right now in imogen featuring emerging and mid-career artists the scene is closing soon in the next few

0:58

days so please come to the aga either today or tomorrow to see the exhibition in person it’s truly fantastic so don’t

1:04

miss it one thing to mention is that i’ll be moderating the chat so if you have any

1:10

questions for a q a you can write them in the q a function at any point and we’ll try to answer

1:16

them at the end so please get your questions ready uh this aga live is made possible in

1:22

part through support from the heart and soul fund by epcor thank you very much to edcore and i would also like to thank

1:29

the canada council for the arts for their support as well and now without further ado i would like

1:34

to introduce emmanuel so emanuel assahor graduated in 2015

1:40

with the bfa in art design from the university of alberta and is currently finishing up a master’s degree at the

1:46

university of guelph his work has been a subject of numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout canada operating

1:53

within the mediums of painting photography and installation emanuel seeks to ask pertinent questions about

1:59

society by investigating situations present in his community his recent work

2:04

explores the garden as a complicated sanctuary space so without further ado take it away

2:09

emmanuel thank you michael um

2:15

uh yeah it’s nice to be here it’s strange to not see

2:21

faces and people that are um watching but

2:26

yeah i guess it’s just really nice to share this space with you all i’m currently based in

2:33

guelph ontario which is uh treaty iii territory and

2:38

it’s the ancestral lands of the anishinaabeg peoples and the mississaugas of the credit first nations

2:45

so i’m definitely very grateful to be able to make work here and live on this land and

2:52

kind of think of think through my ideas here so i’m thankful for the opportunity to be here um

3:00

yeah i guess this is a studio visit so it’s not really like a talk talk i don’t have too much stuff to say i’ve got some

3:08

images to show some of some of the images are from the works that are in the show

3:13

in the scene and then the other images are things that i’ve worked on finishing my masters

3:20

and just sort of thinking about i guess like things coming up next so

3:25

i was going to show you my studio and like move the computer around but i’m actually in the midst of moving so the

3:31

studio is kind of a mess right now because i’m trying to pack things up quickly but i have some images here so you can

3:37

see my stacks of books that are it’s probably about like 30 of the books

3:42

that i have that i recently had as i finished up the mfa program so a lot of books went back

3:48

to the library but these these ones are still sticking around and moving to the next studio

3:54

um i guess we can go to the next image um and so this is kind of the

4:00

yeah the mess um i tend to make a lot of my work yeah using the walls and floors so the my

4:07

floor my studio floor is definitely very messy and if you were here you would not

4:12

be willing to sit on the floor um and i guess we can go to the next image and you can sort of see the tupperware

4:19

um boxes and um yeah some choroplast to like make a

4:25

little soft soft boxes for some paperwork um but yeah this is this is my studio and

4:32

uh if things were not virtual it would be nice to welcome you in and and you know maybe

4:38

share some tea or something so i guess we’ll yeah i guess i’ll move

4:44

on to maybe talking a little bit about the works that are in the show um

4:50

uh and i’ll just say like i’ll look at the chat as well and if anybody has any

4:55

questions at any point and wants to sort of like um speak to something i’m saying um

5:01

immediately like feel free to just drop that in the chat and either myself or michael will

5:07

um get to it just so i don’t yeah this this doesn’t necessarily have to be a talk

5:12

talk so we can try and simulate some sense of conviviality or something i

5:18

guess um yeah uh so

5:24

in the scene i have two paintings um i’ve been thinking of my mother’s garden

5:29

and i’ve been thinking of my father’s garden um i’m not actually sure which one this one is i think this is mother’s

5:37

um and the next image or two images from now from this is so

5:43

the next one is the other painting um something i’ve been thinking about like

5:48

as michael said in the introduction i’ll be thinking about gardens as constructed and complicated sanctuary spaces

5:55

and this work was really interesting to show in edmonton because i made this probably

6:02

about seven months into the mfa program here so i was already living in guelph

6:07

and and kind of starting to work here but these are based on photographs um from uh gardens in the queen

6:15

alexandria neighborhood in edmonton which is where um i used to i used to live

6:20

um and then if you want to move to the next image um with these with these works one thing

6:27

i was really trying to think about was making yeah like trying to make a

6:32

representation of a garden that had a tactile or like a physical

6:38

sense of i guess maybe what i would call like a fraughtness in the idea of the garden because on the one hand it sort

6:44

of like can be this really idyllic concept

6:49

thinking around ideas of like beauty or even the idea of sanctuary and that’s something that really draws

6:56

me to gardens as well as the sort of like underbelly of the complexity of

7:02

um you know land politics or even uh socio-economic issues around who is

7:08

even able to um you know have a have a house and be able to actually cultivate a sort of garden

7:15

so the gardens become this really interesting metaphor for me to sort of think about

7:20

um [Music] i guess simply put just sort of like the current predicament where you’ve got

7:27

this sort of like extremes of beauty and you know really good things happening but also like really intense and hard

7:32

things that we’re trying to navigate as a as a society um

7:37

and if you want to go to the next images um that just sort of shows a little bit

7:43

more of the tactility of the material so what i was interested in here was sort of like yeah making a

7:50

a painted representation of um based off of off of a photograph and

7:56

then i basically like took a power sander to the drop cloth that the the image was

8:02

initially put on to and it sort of like disturbed the material and kind of took away the the

8:07

sense of finish and introduced another um i guess another mark that

8:13

the viewer then has to contend with like the image just doesn’t just stay as sort of this um

8:21

uh finished or uh idyllic thing but there’s actually something um

8:26

that that brings a bit of tension and something to contend with um in the image so i found that interesting

8:33

um the next things i’m showing in the in the show are a series of collages i made so if you move to the next images

8:40

and i just call these garden series um and

8:45

um a little bit about them probably the the thing that kind of stands out to me as i think about these

8:51

collages now is they really were

8:59

like they came out of necessity in the sense that i made them i started making them

9:04

um in i think it was september of

9:10

2020 so we’re sort of like we’ve gone through a pandemic summer we’re sort of now kind of coming to

9:18

this place where we’re all really starting to think about okay how do we how do we live with this thing and you know there’s no sense of when is this

9:24

thing ending what’s gonna happen and so my mfa program was kind of like

9:29

um we just really didn’t know where things were gonna go it’s like are we gonna have access to the studios are we going

9:35

to have access to the studio for a month and then there’s going to be another shutdown and then we have to leave the studios

9:40

um so two things kind of happened a it felt kind of like

9:45

i guess maybe like irresponsible or reckless to really invest in um

9:51

trying to make the sort of larger paintings that i’ve been making before and

9:56

so yeah like the investment was one thing it’s just like well there’s no point starting a six foot by five foot

10:02

painting if i’m gonna have to you know work from home like so many other people have been doing

10:08

um it’s not gonna fit in my house so just like and if and if it did my house would

10:13

smell like paint dinner which is not not good um

10:18

so i had to kind of like shift off my shift up my materials and and figure out a way to work in a on a smaller scale

10:24

and um the second thing that happened was

10:29

um i think probably like many like many of you would feel this way too

10:35

there was just this sense of like i didn’t even really know how to compute

10:40

or process or begin to understand just like everything that was going on um

10:46

not just in terms of the pandemic but the sort of like intensity around racial justice and

10:52

racial inequity and systemic stuff it was just like there was just so much going on

10:58

um and i had i had actually had a really hard time in the studio um making work or at least making work

11:03

the way the way i had been um before the pandemic and before the summer

11:10

um and so this collages actually came out of just like a desire to really like

11:15

slow things down and so what i did was i returned to a lot of the source images if you want to move to the next

11:21

collage i returned to a lot of the source images that had been the foundation for

11:27

my paintings and instead of having to paint them again or

11:32

trying to like re-translate them i just started cutting them up and trying to

11:38

use that process as a way of just sort of like thinking through by just doing and not necessarily really assessing or

11:45

really saying how does this match up with the concept or whatever i would just show up to the studio every day and you know

11:51

put on some music and just make collages until i was ready to go home

11:57

and so they became really interesting to me because i yeah i basically spent the whole semester just doing that like four months just making collages over and

12:04

over again and i would photocopy parts of the collages and print those out and use that in other

12:10

parts of the collages i would photograph them print them out um and so they it became this sort of uh

12:19

uh the way the way i like to think about it is sort of like you know in gardening where you

12:26

you’re transplanting or you’re grafting and and and it just became this sort of like

12:34

uh like simultaneous process where i had like five or six collages you know on

12:40

the go at at a given time and they were just speaking to each other and influencing the way i thought about them

12:46

and um different uh rules would come up where it’s sort

12:52

of like you know okay what happens with this one it sort of was like you know how much can i just keep adding where you’re

12:59

you’re seeing the layers above you’re seeing the layers underneath the layers above or speaking to some of the layers underneath um using the tape thinking

13:06

about the light and how it cuts through the image using the white um of the paper and how that sort of

13:11

speaks to sort of the highlights in the in the photograph and if we go to the next image

13:17

actually cutting through parts of the photograph and like right in the center of this image is actually

13:23

um the the back side of one of the collages became or the back side of one of the

13:29

photographs became kind of like a part of the image so it creates this sort of like false

13:34

atmospheric perspective um that that i think kind of speaks to

13:40

the kind of hazy sky in the sort of top left section of the image

13:46

um and yeah these collages just really became a way for me to sort of like think through

13:53

um to use the the source material i already had um at this time like at this point

13:59

because of you know thinking around like social distancing and and how to work in the midst of a pandemic i also wasn’t

14:05

able to go out and like take more photographs which is something i i do a lot in my practices i just go for walks

14:11

and i photograph gardens that i come across so i really had to just make do with what i had

14:16

and the thing that became i think the thing that stood out like at the end of the process that i i noticed and i was

14:22

like oh like this is really probably the the

14:28

um like the biggest benefit of this whole process was it became like a form of

14:34

gardening um so that kind of like took on this idea of really thinking about the act of

14:40

gardening and maybe even trying to draw a correlation between an artistic practice and a

14:47

garden in practice or thinking about an artistic practice as a form of gardening um

14:53

i i have plants that i i try to keep alive and in the summer i grow

14:59

plants on my balcony but it it it was i don’t know if this makes sense and

15:05

this is where i wish i could see people’s faces and know if this is landing but

15:10

it does feel like something different to think about um an artistic practice as a gardening

15:16

practice um thinking about the sense that a garden is constructed and has sort of like formal elements that go

15:22

into the creation and organizing or organization of space um

15:27

thinking about the acts of of you know composition and balance and and also care thinking about the the

15:34

intentionality that goes into thinking about you know how do these things work together are they operating in a in a

15:40

way that um yeah thanks april um

15:46

like are these things operating in a way that is like you know mutually beneficial you

15:52

know uplifting or are they operating in a way that like one is opposing the other or the contrast becomes

15:59

um detrimental to another part of the image which really is just its composition like that’s how you think

16:05

about balancing the structure of an image so it was really cool to be able to show

16:11

the collages alongside the the paintings in the scene um in my practice i tend to

16:17

work a lot with photography but um i i haven’t really

16:23

um especially in relation to the paintings i haven’t really like shown them side by side and i think it’s really interesting

16:28

to sort of see how they speak to each other because you’ve got these moments of of a clarity of detail but also moments

16:35

of like subtlety and abstraction that come comes from you know photocopying an open image over and over again and

16:41

things start to break down um and that sort of like atmosphere feeling

16:46

like you know you as a viewer you’re trying to reconcile the image um you’re trying to make sense

16:52

of the image is actually something that i think i really seek um in my paintings

16:58

so i guess we’ll go to the next slide um so uh yeah i guess i’ll just say you

17:04

know so this is this is one of the kind of source photographs uh for a painting

17:09

i’ll talk about later and this is actually a photograph of a like an overgrown garden in edmonton as well

17:16

um and if we want to go to the next slide um this is the back of

17:22

you know one of the one of my collages or one of my photographs and something i’ve been doing was

17:28

um [Music] sometimes been part of my like studio experience something that a question

17:34

i’ve been really trying to ask in the studio these days is how to really see an image like how to think about the

17:40

what is the structure of an image how is the image actually really like like what does it compose of and

17:47

one of the things that i find with photography personally for me a lot of the time there’s too much

17:52

information and it actually becomes distracting for me so something i always try to do is is like i try to simplify

17:58

the image and so one strategy i’d be using was i’d print out these photographs in my studio and i would submerge them in water which

18:04

would make the inkjet kind of bleed um so if we go back to the previous image

18:10

the sort of like you know haziness of the blue the fact that the green becomes kind of like fairly general

18:17

um it starts to almost feel like a like a color filled image where the details are not as as crisp or

18:25

as precise um and and what that does for me is it really starts to make it it opens up the

18:30

image for me and i start to see oh like this is this is how actually how the colors relate to each other this is the

18:35

inherent like structure or abstraction that the image is actually built off of because

18:41

working with landscape imagery like man there’s just so much image like there’s just so much detail um and for me i i’ve

18:47

i’ve had to try to figure out ways to simplify in order to actually begin to understand

18:53

um what’s going on in the in the image so

18:58

i guess we’ll zoom uh to image number 10.

19:04

um and so this is just a thing like if i if you were in the studio i would show you physically um

19:11

so i don’t know if you know if you can see it but you know the image on the right side

19:17

uh is is sort of the the under structure for this collage where another image is

19:24

sort of pasted on top and and so you know i would work with these images and you know put the water on them they

19:30

would bleed and then i would photocopy that and print it out again um and then you know this particular

19:37

photograph was a source image for a painting so you can see in like the top right and top left corner there are

19:43

these sort of holes which are actually just the holes from the push pins i’m keeping it up on my studio wall

19:49

and so the next image um is the painting that

19:55

that that kind of came from that uh

20:00

the initial photograph and sort of breaking it down and thinking through the image through first off the photograph

20:07

then the photograph that’s like simplified with the water then the photograph that’s thought through again in the form of collage

20:13

and i’d say all these steps kind of in in the studio are ways of just trying

20:20

to understand the image the ways they’re trying to see what’s there which then opens up the field for me to then be able to think about

20:26

the paintings and the abstraction in them and then later on i’ll i’ll show some etchings so

20:32

um i guess there are like two detail shots that will sort of show like how i navigate the sort of like

20:39

generalization or abstraction um the kind of like color field type color filled sections of the paintings as well

20:46

as you know moments of precise if like detail i like to think about it as like precise but also gestural drawing and it

20:53

speaks to that relationship that the photograph or the altered photograph has so we can look at the detailed shots

21:00

um and one thing that’s interesting about this paintings or or this painting one

21:05

thing i really enjoy about this particular one is the sky um if you were to see it in person

21:11

it’s a bit more obvious but like the sky is like taped out and like cut

21:16

so the the hard edge is this weird contrast with a lot of the softness and

21:22

the bleeding and the smudging that’s going on in the rest of the painting but that was a direct influence of you know

21:28

being in the studio with so many collages with hard edges as well as soft edges that just like directly just led

21:36

into the way i started thinking and seeing how the paintings could operate um [Music]

21:43

so yeah that was really just like okay i hope that kind of gives you a sense of like yeah how this work is

21:48

being made and how the studio is operating and um a little bit about the

21:54

um a sense of my process in the studio um i find whenever i go to these virtual studio

22:02

visits or even actual studio visits i’m i’m just curious as to like how people make the work so

22:07

again if folks have questions about you know specific choices i’m making or if you’ve seen the works in real life and

22:13

there’s something that you’re like how did that happen or why’d you make that choice like feel free to

22:18

feel free to ask um and yeah so we can jump back to sort of the

22:25

studio process thing um so the next image i guess i’ll just

22:31

uh share my mfa thesis work um this is yeah one of the things like i

22:37

wish i could just like um bring the show to edmonton to show a lot of the edmonton community like this is

22:44

what i’ve been doing for the past two years or this is the culmination of the past two years of work and i wish folks

22:49

from edmonton were able to see the show so just a little plug if you’re coming to the gta area or

22:54

if you’re coming to guelph like let me know the show is at the art gallery of guelph until october

23:00

um but yeah i guess we’ll just we can just sort of go through

23:07

the images um this is sort of the intro wall this is a large scale painting called sylvia’s

23:13

garden entrance it’s probably my biggest painting to date it is 12 feet wide by

23:20

seven and a half feet tall and it’s sort of this two panel piece because

23:25

that was how i had to make it in the studio because if not i want to make wouldn’t have been able to get it out um

23:31

[Music] something that shifted for me after thinking about the collages um

23:36

[Music] one thing that kind of i guess through the rest of the

23:41

uh the winter and into the winter semester and this is what i ended up basing a lot

23:47

of my thesis paper on i read a book or yeah a collection of short essays by an

23:53

american poet named ross gay and it’s called the book of delights and

24:00

the book is basically his attempt to write a short essay

24:06

every day from one birthday to the next birthday and the challenge he gave himself was

24:12

to write an essay about something that he delighted in that day um

24:19

and on the surface that can seem really cheesy um but he expressly states that his reason

24:25

for doing so his reason for thinking about the light um ross gay is also a black man living

24:30

in america and also a gardener his reason for thinking about the light

24:36

was because of the [Music] what’s the right word

24:44

i don’t know what the right word is but this is the word that comes to mind like just the the prevalence the like constant prevalence of

24:51

um trauma grief um bad news um

24:57

fear anxiety that he just felt like he was he was living with um

25:03

and so he made this very careful intention or yeah this considered an intention to say okay like every day i’m going to ask

25:10

myself like what is one thing i delighted in and i thought this book was really beautiful because it didn’t just

25:16

like he was able to capture the weight of yeah the the grief and the fear and

25:21

the trauma and anxiety that i think many of us are feeling today

25:26

but still pay attention to the fact that

25:31

um delight or or being able to delight in things was uh

25:38

something that helped him to survive and and also helped him to thrive in the midst of

25:43

um hard things and so one one thing that i’ve been thinking about because i’ve been

25:48

thinking about gardens for a few years now and so i was like okay like what is it about these gardens like why have i been

25:53

so curious about them and and interested in representing them and re-representing them you know you take the photograph

25:59

you come back to the studio you make a drawing you make a painting you make an etching you photocopy that you print it

26:04

out again like what is it and i was reading some writing by um

26:11

an american uh i think like cultural theorist her name is elaine scary

26:16

and she was writing about beauty and one thing that kind of stood out to me she was like beauty tends to

26:22

be self-reproducing that an object of beauty um regenerates itself it causes either the

26:30

viewer or somehow in its own self it it recreates itself and i was like oh like

26:35

maybe the thing about these gardens and the reason why i’ve been invested in these depictions of gardens is actually

26:40

because i’ve been invested in um depictions of beauty and thinking about

26:46

beauty in a similar way as russ gay would sort of position delight as a sort of like necessity for survival or like a

26:53

precursor to thriving in the midst of harsh realities

26:58

so that’s sort of the the core essence of the work um

27:04

and i think i’ll just um helen if you just want to like move from

27:09

image to image and just you know pause on there for like a couple of seconds before moving on to the next one

27:15

i’ll just sort of let you see the show um and i’ll stop talking for a little bit

27:53

actually i do want to introduce this ones these are it was really nice to get back into printmaking i haven’t made

27:58

prints in a little bit um so these are two etchings that are part of the show

28:57

you

29:23

so i guess that’s probably close to the last image

29:29

um yeah so that’s that’s my uh that’s my thesis show um

29:38

and yeah i guess i’ll just open the floor now at this point like i’ve talked

29:44

for almost 30 minutes um and see if folks have questions or things that they’re curious about um

29:52

yeah let’s do that

30:00

hi everyone i’m back so yeah i guess this is our q a portion

30:05

uh so please put your questions in the chat and then we will try to answer them

30:12

thank you so much emmanuel for introducing your work and exhibition and also uh giving us a peek into your

30:18

thesis show it’s been really interesting so maybe i’ll start off with some questions for myself while we also

30:26

uh we also look at questions we also have facebook so i’m gonna be checking uh

30:31

facebook as well so you can put the comments in the facebook chat since we are also

30:36

live streaming so something that struck uh stroke me or like kind of like got my brain thinking

30:42

is you talked a little bit about your influence and the first image that you decided to show was these books

30:48

and i thought it was really interesting how you later talked about uh the writer ross gay which was really interesting so

30:55

i wanted to learn a little bit more about like the starting of a work so i

31:00

like in my mind like how does it work i feel like you’re walking through a garden then you take a

31:06

snap or what what’s like the what’s what’s the starting point for you

31:12

yeah um uh a court member of mine in the mfa

31:17

program basically like talked about and talked about her her artistic practice

31:24

um as actually not necessarily having a starting point it’s sort of like there are these you know there’s option a

31:30

option b option c option d and the practice the thing can start at any one

31:36

of those points and it sort of like cycles through these um i guess

31:41

uh like yeah points in a in a in a process

31:46

um for me yeah maybe maybe i guess yeah none of the images would

31:52

necessarily really come into being without the the process of going for walks and

31:57

photographing gardens that are in my neighborhood so this is a practice i started in

32:02

in edmonton um in in queen alex they’re just sort of like yeah just beautiful front lawn gardens

32:09

and then you know sometimes you meet a person working in their garden and i would usually just like say hi and can i

32:15

photograph your garden and a lot of times they’re like oh man you think this is the garden check out the one in the back

32:22

and so you know make some friendships that way and also um yeah see gardens that i i would i

32:29

didn’t even know existed and then i sort of bring these images back to the studio um a lot of times they would just sit on

32:34

my phone for a long time and um you know maybe a month later or two months later i’m just looking through

32:40

images and i’m like ah there’s something interesting about that one print it out sit with it in the studio so like the chair painting

32:47

and that chair photograph has has moved with me like it moved me from edmonton to guelph so i’ve had that photograph

32:52

probably about four years now maybe even five years now and it’s just sort of been a recurring

32:58

thing that’s come back um for me so i don’t know i don’t know if that

33:04

answers no that definitely answers it yeah it’s interesting with like edmonton and

33:09

guelph it’s like they both have really these beautiful landscapes and um

33:15

you know we have the river valley here which is really iconic and very nice um so i’m just curious maybe you can

33:21

talk a little bit about like you’re the evolution from you know being in edmonton and then moving to guelph like

33:27

how has because obviously your the space has changed so much like the environment that you’re walking in has

33:33

changed so much so can you talk a little bit about that that that change or that evolution

33:39

yeah totally i think so um image number

33:48

the painting the really large painting silvia’s garden entrance probably is a good way to sort

33:53

of talk about it i think one of the things that like surprised me when i moved to ontario

34:00

it’s just the green here is so different like i don’t know if i don’t know what it is um if it’s the humidity or the

34:07

fact that it’s a longer growing i don’t i don’t like just the weather is different i guess um

34:12

but like the colors here like when i and because and i think it happens the reverse like when someone from ontario

34:17

moves to alberta they’re like oh my gosh like the colors are so different so definitely like a difference i i feel

34:24

like the last two years i’ve had a different sense of color because the landscape has changed

34:30

um that painting sylvia’s garden entrance is based on um

34:35

a garden that’s owned by a friend i met in guelph a similar thing i was out for

34:40

a walk saw this person working in the garden i was like you know beautiful garden can i take a few photographs and were like

34:47

yeah sure you know and kind of built a little friendship and she was like check out the back um

34:53

and my experience of that garden was just walking in and being just like oh my gosh like does it ever even does it end

34:59

um and it does is just you know guelph also at the university of guelph there’s a

35:05

landscape architecture school um and it’s a really well i think really well-renowned landscape architecture

35:11

program so i think a lot more of the gardens here are like designed by landscape

35:16

architects and more sort of like strategically um

35:22

or i don’t yeah like just intentionally designed to really like get get this like

35:29

and the season is longer i saw i’ve seen plants that i’d never seen before um

35:34

and this painting actually kind of felt like uh maybe a celebration of that in terms

35:40

of the intensity of the color and the scale and try to mimic this sort of experience

35:45

of being sort of like overwhelmed by like yeah the scale of a thing but also just like

35:51

the like intense nuance of color and line and all that stuff so

35:57

um i think moving to guelph was really good for my practice and it was just like you know formal development of like

36:03

the processes in my work because it brought it brought new visual like

36:09

okay yeah it brought new images that i had to contend with or even just a new visual experience

36:17

yeah traveling and moving definitely does that to you yeah so i was really appreciative that you

36:23

showed us your studio can you talk us through maybe like what’s it like to or

36:29

what’s your kind of like studio ritual if you have any or what’s your like working practice or anything of that

36:35

nature like what is it like to be it to have a studio i guess since some people don’t have one

36:42

yeah i was i was um [Music] not in the best place when i couldn’t

36:50

come to the studio like during in the in the last summer we couldn’t we didn’t have access to the studio

36:55

and i don’t think i realized how much how much of like uh uh like a haven or something that the

37:01

studio actually is for me until you know you lose access uh to it and then you’re like oh like this is actually really

37:07

good um and not just good for me like also really good for my partner because it just means they don’t have to deal with

37:13

me being at home and being grumpy so both of us were very happy when

37:20

we could come when i could come back to the studio um i love being in a studio um

37:26

i i feel like probably my my working routine is

37:32

it’s like it’s like if you think about going to the gym like they always say like

37:38

getting to the gym is the hard part um but once you’re there you like you know you’ll you’ll exercise it’s kind of like

37:43

the reverse for me like coming to the studio is the easy part like i love coming to the studio and i like make myself a coffee a lot of times the

37:50

lights will be off and i’ll just sort of chill here and then i want to do

37:55

everything else um then i reply to emails then i start

38:01

reading then i read the news um and and and then after i was like yo

38:06

come on like you you got it you got to get some work done gotta get to work yeah definitely

38:13

make use of this space um yeah i love i love being here

38:19

that’s great well you have a really nice studio so i have a question from the audience danielle wants to know and they

38:24

say i’m curious about the titles of your paintings at the aga what role does family or memory place in

38:31

your work um that’s really cool um

38:37

i so the first or the second question kind of stands out a bit quicker

38:43

memory is actually really significant for me in these paintings because one thing i’m really

38:48

in like in the collages um and and the etchings one thing i’m really thinking about is

38:55

with this work it’s less about visually representing these spaces

39:02

but actually more about trying to reproduce the experience of being in the

39:07

spaces um so you know i’ve talked about sylvia silva’s garden entrance

39:14

um it’s directly titled after like it’s exactly what it is it’s the

39:20

entrance it’s a picture taken from the entrance to my friend sylvia’s garden um it’s been modified a little bit like i

39:26

shifted the composition around um and and what i’m really trying to do there is

39:33

like someone recently asked like how do i know when when these images are done and and the way i answered the question

39:38

was i was like yeah when it starts to remind me of what that experience feels like so um a lot of my choices

39:46

for color and and scale of mark and and the sort of like looseness of the gesture

39:52

um they’re not necessarily trying to replicate the photograph um but they’re actually trying to bring the image to a

39:57

point where it’s sort of it’s activating or it’s it’s it’s acting in a way that

40:03

um [Music] brings me back to to that moment um or or could like has the capacity to

40:09

um the other image uh centerpiece which is the last image we showed um with the sort of like

40:16

um potted plants that’s that’s some sort of like tall grass

40:21

along the sort of uh covering of trees i had this experience where it was sort of like

40:26

golden hour and i was in sylvia’s garden and i’d been doing some photography and

40:32

just the way the light hit that potted plants it kind of was golden it felt it just it

40:39

felt golden because of yeah like home like sunset um but it was covered by this bush and

40:45

everything else around it seemed kind of dark and foggy but the potted plant seemed to be like

40:51

iridescent or something um so i think that’s the way the the way

40:56

um memory kind of functions in these images is sort of like trying to create garden

41:03

images that feel like a garden experience um and and as the family

41:10

i get i guess you’re probably referring to i’ve been thinking of my mother’s garden everything about my father my

41:15

father’s garden um it’s less family in those ones and more

41:21

thinking around the idea of like potentiality um so with that one

41:27

uh you know a question that was sort of coming up a lot in grad school was sort of like oh you know why are you documenting other people’s gardens why

41:33

not your garden you know why not gardens from back home in nigeria and blah blah blah and the honest answer was like you know

41:41

my parents didn’t have time to make those gardens um and so

41:47

the the painting became a way for me to think about okay using what i have there’s this uh

41:54

i think it’s uh uh what’s his name now uh uh

42:00

frederick jameson or so he says like it’s actually impossible to picture the future

42:05

um without using images from the past or the present um and i really am drawn to that idea like

42:11

how can you imagine a future how can you imagine like if you were to create an image that’s a

42:17

a rendering of a future you have to still use things that you know like you can’t just

42:23

you know you only know what you know um so

42:28

that’s been a part of this work and thinking about like these gardens as much as they’re based in places that

42:34

already exist they become these sort of like alternate spaces or these you know my own constructed garden

42:42

um that offers the potential to actually be a third place or like a different

42:47

space and other space um so i hope that kind of like

42:52

gets at that the the role of family and and memory in the work yeah definitely that’s that’s really an

43:00

interesting point that you raise yeah so we have another comment this one’s from sarah and so it’s a little

43:06

bit lengthy so uh get ready for it hello emmanuel i was thinking about when you

43:11

were talking about relating the idea of the act of keeping a garden keeping a gardening to okay keeping a

43:18

garden to working with images of gardens and just simply relating it to beauty i am wondering if it might be more than

43:24

that like maybe tapping into the calming nature of the act of gardening and the caring for things to facilitate growth

43:31

and renewal is there do you have any response to that comment uh hi sarah

43:38

yeah yeah i i agree i think it’s definitely it’s definitely more than that um

43:43

i think the the the use of the word beauty

43:49

for me um [Music] kind of actually speaks speaks to that you know like uh uh

43:56

you know a practice of cutting apart something moving it to a place or you know if we just want to

44:01

talk about like let’s use the gardening metaphor the i think the care or the act of

44:07

gardening is a like like beauty is not just aesthetic i guess is what i’m trying to say um

44:13

there can be beautiful processes there can be beautiful experiences um and so i think that act of care that’s

44:20

invested in in gardening um as well as the act of of like grief like

44:27

when your plants don’t die or where your plants die um when i had a bunch of like fights with a

44:34

squirrel that kept eating my tomatoes um like

44:39

yeah like i think i think they’re all sort of it’s all in that um or it’s all engaged

44:46

in that um and so yeah i think i i think it’s less it’s not just the aesthetic experience

44:52

of like oh that’s a beautiful thing but also yeah thinking about the care and the process um

44:57

with you know talking to other artists and and and you you know this sarah as well like

45:04

there’s something to just being in the studio and like when you’re sort of in that groove and you’re working

45:10

um it feels very similar to what i’ve heard gardeners say about like even like pulling out weeds you know like you sort

45:16

of get lost in that process or something um it’s a meditative process so much it’s a

45:22

meditative pro exactly um and the sort of the actions you do um it feels strange to talk about

45:28

painting in this way like maybe it feels a little hokey pokey but like like i’m just reading the end of sarah’s question

45:33

like to facilitate growth and renewal sometimes i feel that way about like you know these objects that we make you know

45:39

it’s like no like i’m gonna shift this color and i’m gonna do this thing i’m gonna sand this part down

45:45

to facilitate the emergence of this object so this object can really like you know

45:50

shine or something um yeah i don’t know yeah i like i like that question

45:56

yeah that’s a great question thank you so much sarah um so i have another question for myself so

46:03

the exhibition in edmonton is called the scene and so i was hoping that maybe you could

46:08

talk a little bit about like the arts scene in edmonton or you know differences that you see

46:15

working in different spaces now being in guelph so can you talk a little bit about that i guess the first thing i

46:21

want to say about the art in edmonton is i miss it i miss you guys

46:26

um uh yeah i mean i i guess

46:34

i guess my life has been quite different like you know like the the grad school experience at least my grad school

46:40

experience has been actually very like like yeah like isolated because of the pandemic and stuff and so

46:45

a lot of i wouldn’t actually say i’m really connected to the scene in guelph more so

46:51

that i sort of work here and have a have a space to sort of like ask my questions here

46:56

um uh whereas i feel like you know back back

47:01

in edmonton i was i was a bit more like really engaged in the community through work that i was doing outside of even

47:07

the studio and um you know working at the aga and getting to know people there

47:12

um showing a bit more um outside like yeah like showing at like hardcore or

47:17

snap um or at the mcmullen so i i i guess short short answer is

47:26

like when i think of like an art scene that i’ve been a part of as of now i still really just think of the the like not

47:34

the aja um well maybe the pidgey two but edmonton i think of edmonton yeah and that’s really sort of the the place

47:42

um that i felt like i was really a part of a community um uh my partner and i are moving to

47:47

toronto um now and to do some work there and and i feel like i’m looking forward

47:53

to to getting a sense of yeah what it’s like to really be in that city and

47:58

um practice in the city as opposed to sort of being in the in the academic bubble which which is what i’ve been in

48:04

for the past two years yeah fair enough yeah that kind of leads into my next question and it’s talking a

48:10

little bit about the your future and what’s next so you mentioned you’re moving to toronto what else are you up

48:16

to um i uh

48:23

hard question no i it’s i i i got myself into trouble and i applied

48:30

for a phd program and i i got in and so i’ve got more school ahead of me so

48:35

that’s that feels like these days knowing how tired i am from from finishing the mfa it feels like

48:41

what was i thinking but i’m really jazzed about the about the research um i think i think it’d be really fun so i’ll

48:47

be doing a phd um and then also just trying to yeah like

48:52

um i’ve heard i heard multiple people say this before i started the mfa and while i was in the mfa that like

48:58

the mfa just feels like time to really hunker down and like

49:05

uh unearth some some some like juicy starts like

49:11

i felt like as i was putting putting the finishing touches on my thesis paper um

49:17

it really felt like i was just beginning um and so i’m really looking forward to

49:22

just time in the studio and and just time to really push these ideas forward

49:28

further like i think some of the formal things in the work are strong and are starting to really work but i’m just

49:33

starting to get familiar with them um and so it’s like all right just like time to hunker down and and

49:40

and produce the work and see see see what these you know it’s been two years of

49:46

of trying to find the language um and now i think i think i’ve got you know things that i can really start to tease

49:52

for the next little bit okay that sounds so exciting okay so i just check in the q a and so

49:58

there’s no more questions in the q a so i’ll give one more question or one more chance for people to answer ask

50:04

questions um but i’ll have one more question for you and it’s a little bit about advice so you’re a young artist

50:10

and i’m sure there’s young artists watching this uh this webinar as well do you have any advice for painters or young artists uh

50:18

in general like anything that you learned through your time uh

50:24

yeah this question this question right it’s a it’s a hard one it’s a little bit like

50:29

you know i guess the first thing that comes to my mind because i was having a conversation with someone about this yesterday

50:35

you know it um it might feel impossible but it isn’t um

50:43

just just keep showing up um [Music] i mean i say this not as in like advice

50:49

but more just like stuff that i’m trying to tell myself to kind of on the on the day-to-day

50:56

um it’s you know it’s just just showing up in and

51:02

being committed to your practice um i think that’s something i’m really trying to hold on to even at the end of this

51:08

mfa program it’s sort of like uh there’s a little bit of like yeah who am i you know what do i do next like

51:14

what happens now yeah and i don’t know you know i don’t know what i don’t know what the future holds or

51:21

you know even um yeah as much as you care about the work

51:27

or whatever like you you can’t necessarily really control the outcomes outside of outside of just showing up and doing the work so

51:33

i think i think that’s been probably the that’s the piece of advice i hold on to

51:39

um so i guess i could share that yeah definitely well you you can’t make the work if you’re not showing up

51:46

there that’s the first step yeah and anything outside of that is out of your control yeah definitely

51:52

so maybe we’ll just leave it there thank you so much emmanuel for having this chat and uh showing us your studio and

51:59

showing your thesis show and explaining your work at the current show the scene at the aga i just want to mention one

52:06

more time that you know the show’s closing this weekend so i hope people can come down to the aga and visit it

52:12

um we might have a survey for this exhibition or don’t for this public program so if anyone wants to

52:19

give us some feedback on this public program please do so and we just have a comment from iris

52:25

your art is beautiful thank you for the tour and talk so maybe that’s a perfect way to leave it thank you so much

52:31

emmanuel great do you have any last words uh

52:36

yeah i hope you are all having beautiful days uh it’s not if it’s not too rainy even if it is rainy like go outside

52:43

um and yeah i hope you are all well thanks for thanks for being here this is great

52:48

um i wish i could see your faces but we will in time definitely okay well bye for now bye

52:55

everyone

No results found