Past Residents
Past Resident2012: Canada Council for the Arts
Samina Mansuri
In her recent work, Samina Mansuri uses as a starting point media depictions of war-torn places such as Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq as well as the twin towers or places like New Orleans that have been ravaged by natural disasters. Frequently the architecture of these locations, captured from an aerial view, is reduced to ash or rubble. These views tend to provide a detached sense of actual place. Through a transformed language of aerial cartography Mansuri creates subjective mappings of an ambiguous location of trauma. Through this she aims to bring attention to viewers about mediated representations of misery and its impact on individual and public memory.
Samina Mansuri (born Karachi) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Toronto, Canada. She received her BFA from Pratt Institute, New York and MFA from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh. Mansuri has exhibited her work internationally for over two decades. Recent exhibitions include Qualia or the pulse of Steel, Hamilton, Canada 2012; Out of Rubble, Space Gallery, Pittsburgh, 2011; Leaning Towards Collapse, A Space Gallery, Toronto, Canada, 2011; Empire of Dreams Phenomenology of the Built Environment, Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Toronto, Canada; Double Consciousness, Mattress Factory Museum, USA, 2007 and Post-Object, Doris McCarthy Gallery, Scarborough, Canada, 2007. Her works are represented in public and private collections and have been extensively featured and reviewed in catalogs, books, newspapers and journals.
Residents from Canada
Past Resident2012: Canada Council for the Arts
Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay
Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay’s artistic work articulates itself chiefly through videos that combine singing, song lyrics and self-reflexive performance to contemplate the singing voice and the history of song, the rendering of love and emotion into words and the ways emotional expression is influenced by technology and popular culture. In recent years, his work has shifted focus towards the exploration of wordless, vocal calls and the vast possibilities of what vocal sounds can signify. Ramsay has also focused a renewed approach to the use and reinterpretation of found sonic and visual material, moving away from the banal discourses of pop music to the visionary wisdom of elders.
Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay (born 1973, Montréal, Canada) is an artist and diarist. His work in video, sound, print and textile has exhibited across Canada, Europe and Asia, garnering prizes in festivals in Germany, Portugal, Poland and Canada. His work is represented in numerous private collections as well as the National Gallery of Canada.
Residents from Canada
Past Resident2012: Wallace Arts Trust
Akiko Diegel
Akiko Diegel’s works deal with existence: things that are consumed, worn, worked, worried, carried, things used as comforts and things used as crutches. Diegel’s practice utilizes and examines the act of collecting, recording, constructing and stitching. She works to balance the works between the corporeal and the behavioral sides of being a person. Diegel’s final artworks often relate to the body and human behaviors. Her practice moves fluidly between the seductively kaleidoscopic and the poised, quiet and contained.
Akiko Diegel (born Japan) lives and works in Auckland, New Zealand. She graduated with an MFA in 2008 from the Elam School of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland. In 2011, Akiko Diegel was awarded the Paramount Award for her work, Cure, at the 20th Annual Wallace Art Awards. Her work has been included in the Wallace Art Award finalist exhibition every year between 2006 and 2010. Diegel was a finalist in the Waiheke Art Awards (2011), the Waikato Museum National Contemporary Art Award (2007-2010) and the Norsewear Art Award (2007).