Skip to content Skip to main navigation

2013 University of Toronto MVS Program Graduating Exhibition

Bedroom with negative space of human

Works by:

Aleesa Cohene, Jessica Hein, Manolo Lugo, Julius Poncelet Manapul

2013 University of Toronto MVS Programme Graduating Exhibition

April 2–13, 2013

University of Toronto Art Centre

The University of Toronto Art Centre is pleased to exhibit the thesis projects of the 2013 Master of Visual Studies graduate students: Jessica Hein, Julius Poncelet Manapul, and Manolo Lugo.

The Colour of There from Here
Jessica Hein

This work began with walking and the possibility of becoming lost. Without maps or a destination, I immersed myself in my environment, fully present and open to the unknown. In both cities and in forests, I found myself in unexpected moments where the places I know suddenly became unfamiliar. Through treetops, condos, and hydro wires, I sought small openings to spaces that are vast and unfolding—that, if we let them, remind us of what lies beyond our small horizons. In losing myself, both the internal and the external became expansive. A thundering front, a disappearing cloud, the rise of breath, and the fall of feet—all were sensed and understood through the movement of my body. I found these spaces once more as I made pours of water and worked with powdered graphite, metals, and minerals. Through movement and the reactions between the materials, vast and shifting topographies emerged, evoking the ephemeral and the physical.

Through the Looking Glass: Inside My Domestic Portrait
Julius Poncelet Manapul
Curated by Master of Museum Studies Student Laura McPhie

In the past, Julius Poncelet Manapul’s art appropriated iconography from structures of oppression in his personal and cultural history. A large body of his work presented stunning pieces constructed from queer pornography that inversed the power dynamics present in his experiences of religion, immigration, sexuality and gender. In this exhibition, Julius looks to the future by crafting a domestic space for a fictional child named Christian James. The child and the space are constructed from a collage of Julius’s and his husband’s identities and shared life. In this evolution of his work, Julius invites visitors to engage, consume and interact with his child; the possibility of a future constructed from a harmonic convergence of identity.

Corrections
Manolo Lugo

Manolo Lugo’s work Corrections investigates specific manifestations of social phenomena that respond to the political and economic realities of Culiacán, Mexico, an active site for the illegal drug trade endemic to the area. Using the cult of Jesús Malverde, an early 20th century folk hero from the area, at the margins of institutionalized religion as a point of departure, Lugo focuses on idiosyncratic rituals that make the implicit violence of the city visible. He proposes that these manifestations are symptomatic of unsustainable Western social relations that are organized around consumption and excess. When documenting terrazzo votives that are cemented to the facade of the folk saint’s temple, the artist uses an indexical approach as a strategy to denounce the lack of neutrality in all photographic classification systems. In a different body of work, Lugo cuts into and disrupts the photograph as a unified field, echoing the violence instilled in the memorials that family members place at the sites in the city where their loved ones have been killed. A performance for the camera enacts an instance in which a sophisticated system of violence is exercised not to harm the body, but to condition the behaviour of an individual. Through performative and photographic strategies that serve as metaphors of the underlying social conditions of Culiacan, the artist reveals territories where systemic violence is both staged and contested.

Aleesa Cohene’s work will be exhibited at Diaz Contemporary.

This exhibition is produced as part of the requirements for the MVS, Studio Program degree at the University of Toronto.

Opening Reception

Thursday April 4, 2013, 7-9pm

Gallery Talks

Wednesday April 10, 2013, 7-9pm
Featuring the artists and curators in UTAC’s April student art exhibitions

Our Supporters

We gratefully acknowledge the project support from Manulife Financial with additional project support from The MVS (Master of Visual Studies) within the Department of Art.

Title Image: Jessica Hein, detail of The Colour of There from Here, 2013.

  • logo_manulife