2022 University of Toronto MVS Studio Program Graduating Exhibition

The Art Museum, in partnership with the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto, is pleased to exhibit the graduating projects of the 2022 Master of Visual Studies graduate students Arezu Salamzadeh, Kevin Schmidt, Anran Guo, and Jeremy Laing. The new works demonstrate a capacious invocation of craft, utilizing techniques that critique the historical present and imagine worlds otherwise.

This exhibition is produced as part of the requirements for the MVS Studio degree in Visual Studies at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, University of Toronto.

Arezu Salamzadeh (she/they) is a “queer,” “neurodivergent,” “mixed race,” Mississauga-based artist who creates objects, performances, music, and spaces for people to interact with and move through. They ask questions about nostalgia, selfhood, power, desire, and loneliness through a language of humour and play. She received her BFA, Honours, from the School of Visual Arts, New York, in 2016. They have since exhibited at galleries, museums, and unconventional venues throughout Canada, the US, Italy, and the UK.

Kevin Schmidt lives and works on the traditional land of the Huron-Wendat, Seneca, and Mississaugas of the Credit, as well as the unceded territory of the Secwepemc. His practice functions as a critical and subjective examination of spectacle. His works often conflate and displace, providing alternate vantage points on genres such as landscape, “how-to” instruction, or museum display. Schmidt’s recent solo exhibitions include 2018’s We Are the Robots at the Vancouver Art Gallery and Reckless, a public art installation on North Vancouver’s Polygon. In parallel to the 2022 MVS Thesis Exhibition, he has a solo exhibition at the Musée d’art de Joliette. Kevin Schmidt is represented by Catriona Jeffries.

Anran Guo is a female queer artist currently based in Hamilton and Toronto. She grew up in China and came to Canada in 2014. Guo is primarily focused on sculptures and installations; her works are critical and playful, offering layered readings, and are usually in response to political issues and social issues.

Jeremy Laing makes objects, spaces, and situations for embodiment and relation. Through the synthesis of craft, conceptual, and social modes, their work explores the interrelation and transitional potential of people and things, materials and meanings, and questions the normative logics of who and what matters, is valued, or not.