KARUHANGA, Jessica

Saturday October 12, 7 pm
630 Queen Street East

I am a first-generation Canadian artist of British-Ugandan heritage whose work addresses Black diasporic concerns through lens-based technologies, sculpture, video and performance. In Embodied Avatars: Genealogies of Black Feminist Art and Performance, scholar Uri McMillan describes Black women performance artists as “wielding their bodies as pliable matter” to position objecthood as a strategy that “makes the spectres subject to their presence.” I often use myself as a subject and material to interrogate constructions of Black identity and representation. Through body, place and technology, my work explores the limitations of how cultural objects perform and for whom.

Jessica Karuhanga’s work has been presented at venues including Warehouse9 (Copenhagen, DK), Sarajevski Otvoreni Centar (Sarajevo, BA), Mitchell Art Gallery (Edmonton), Robert McLaughlin Gallery (Oshawa), Nuit Blanche (Toronto), Onsite Gallery (Toronto), Remai Modern (Saskatoon), Pallas Art Projects (Dublin, IE), WNDX Festival (Winnipeg), ROM (Toronto), and Goldsmiths University (London, UK). Her work is also in public collections (Museum London, Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery). She holds a BFA (Western University) and an MFA (University of Victoria) and is an Assistant Professor at Western University.

howyoufeel
Sunday October 29 to Saturday November 4
featured on Instagram #7amd8

During my residency I will enact a series of movements. howyoufeel will explore touch through virtual filters, zooms and mediations. How are you moved when I move? Do I leave a mark? Is the response lodged in the exhale of your gaze? Does it feel the same when I am touching me vs. you touching me? I am invested in these platforms as a locus or moment of connection. This series is a loose eyelash is hot breath impressed upon cold glass.

Jessica Karuhanga is an artist based in Toronto, Canada. She has presented her work at Trinity Square Video, Art Gallery of Ontario, Videofag and Goldsmiths (London, UK). She has lectured for The Power Plant, Royal Ontario Museum and Tisch School of the Arts at NYU’s Black Portraitures Series. She has written for BlackFlash and C magazines. She holds degrees from Western University and University of Victoria.

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Critical review Residencies of Resistance, or, Performatively Flexing for the ‘Gram by Delilah Rosier