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: SEAT Pagine Gialle S.p.A.
Simone Martinetto
Simone Martinetto’s practice consists of photography and installations. His work is an investigation on the importance of memory, freedom, coincidences and dreams. Martinetto has created a new form of narrative, using an original photographic language to tell small stories with symbolic meanings. He uses photography as a tool to examine the minds of others. Without Memory is a series of photographs and installations with the artist’s grandmother as the subject matter who lost her memory and subsequently fills her home with reminder notes. The series, Travellers, documents racing pigeons and the images they see during their return trips. Such Stuff As Dreams Are Made On is made of “talking photos” where the viewer is able to relive the dreams of other people.
Simone Martinetto (born 1980, Turin, Italy) has a degree in philosophy. He has exhibited in over 40 exhibitions in Italy and around the world, including Claudio Bottello Contemporary Gallery, Torino and Frost Art Museum, Miami. He began to practice photography when his grandfather, shortly before his death, passed on to him the camera he bought on the occasion of his birth. Martinetto works as an artist, cinematic still photographer and teacher.
Residents from Italy
Raffaela Naldi Rossano
The Italian Academy for Advanced Studies, Columbia University, Italian Cultural Institute of New York, Directorate-General for Public and Cultural Diplomacy of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture
2024
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).