The Further Apart Things Seem

Anna Binta Diallo, Atanas Bozdarov, Barbara Hobot, Adriana Kuiper & Ryan Suter, Brendan Lee Satish Tang, and Couzyn van Heuvelen

Co-curated by Shannon Anderson and Jay Wilson

In a social and political moment where opinions are often divisive, the possibility of finding common ground can seem beyond reach. Debates over human rights, climate change, land claims, and even the politicizing of the pandemic often seem at cross-purposes and irresolvable. How do we respond in times of uncertainty—when do we push forward, when do we give up, and when do we try things differently? In The Further Apart Things Seem, artists follow distinct paths toward subtle forms of resistance, while exploring areas of connection between that which feels disconnected or in opposition. By testing the unexpected, they embrace material experimentation and provisionality as productive spaces for building resilience, resolution, and understanding.

The Further Apart Things Seem is co-presented by Contemporary Calgary, the University of Waterloo Art Gallery, and the Art Gallery of Mississauga.

Artist’s Biographies

Atanas Bozdarov (b. Etobicoke, ON, lives in Toronto, ON) is an artist and designer whose recent projects have explored systems of access and accessibility, unnoticed conditions of disability and design, and architectural propositions. His hybridized structures are both subtle and subversive, drawing attention to failures of access in public space.

Anna Binta Diallo (b. Dakar, Senegal, lives in Winnipeg, MB) is a multidisciplinary visual artist who draws from her complex cultural background to explore the continuously evolving processes of understanding identity. Working with a wide range of source materials, she generates photographic collages that reflect the shifting and contradictory nature of writing our histories.

Barbara Hobot (b. Toronto, lives in Kitchener, ON) considers the cultural, historical, and metaphorical associations of nets and the practice of fog catching in her practice. Referencing forms of loose trompe l’oeil, alchemy, gravity, and chance, her mixed-media works create a confusion of materials that draw attention to how a simple utilitarian structure can act as a metaphor for protest.

Adriana Kuiper (b. Toronto, ON, lives in Sackville, NB) and Ryan Suter (b. Tilbury, ON, lives in Sackville, NB) have collaborated on work since 2010. Their recent quilt-based sculptures consider the interior lives of those coping with fear and conflict, focusing on the tension between the desire to retreat and the need to speak out.

Brendan Lee Satish Tang (b. Dublin, Ireland, lives in Vancouver, BC) explores issues of identity by bringing together disparate cultural symbols. Replicating sentimental objects drawn from his youth experiences as a way of communicating with his past selves, Tang considers the inner struggle to reconcile the various aspects of his past and ancestral traditions. Couzyn van Heuvelen (b. Iqaluit, NU, lives in Bowmanville, ON) fuses the cultural traditions of his Inuit heritage with Western techniques to generate hybridized objects. His imaginative forms reference Inuit issues of forced relocation and the loss of traditional methods of self-sustenance, as well as broader shifting realities in a time of climate change and social upheaval.