making: an exploration for the self

November 8 - December 1st, 2022
Presented by Yiara

While many advocate for the separation of art and artist, curators Fernanda Alvarez and Laila Meyer seek to highlight these connections.

How does the artistic process hold the ideas that the artist has of themselves and how they relate to their surroundings? What can the process teach you about yourself? How can embracing aspects of your identity benefit your art? Does an audience’s awareness to the artist’s identity obscure or elevate the art?

This exhibit explores identity, in all its nuance, through a variety of visual mediums by diverse Tiohtià:ke/Montreal-based artists. Ranime El Morry expresses the effect of autistic masking, Agathe Leroy sews together ideas of home and belonging coming from a nomadic background, and Anika Yvette emphasizes the healing aspects of art.

Yiara invites you to engage and embrace your identity and those of our artists, and celebrate both the intersections and diversities which come to define our world(s).

making: an exploration for the self

Anika Yvette, Dying Down, 2022, Coloured Pencil, Graphite, 18.5" x 12"

Anika Yvette, The Ohio Gang Redefined, Acrylic Paint, 36" x 36"

Anika Yvette is a multidisciplinary visual artist based in Toronto and Montreal. Their practice is focused within the process of artmaking. By creating large-scale work, they emphasize the material and mediative aspects of their creative process. Digital animation, illustration, painting, rug hooking, wood burning, and embroidery are some of the avenues they explore in this process. Central to Anika’s practice is the healing process, and the ways in which that growth highlights how visual media is an essential way of communicating oneself to the world. This is illustrated through personal visual narrative and stylized illustrations that embrace duration, abstraction, and surrealist symbolism. Anika is currently a student in Concordia University’s Studio Arts and Art History program and is pursuing a minor in Animation.

Agathe Leroy is an artist and educator based in Tiohtià:ke, also known as Montréal. She grew up in Hong Kong in a French and Slavic household. From a young age, Agathe questioned herself about her identity–particularly in regards to the concept of home. “Where do you come from?” is a question that comes up so rapidly each time one meets a new person, and can sometimes be a very hard question to answer. Agathe’s quest to develop and foster a feeling of belonging, home, and accepting her nomadic culture has translated into a material and conceptual interest in fabrics. She investigates questions of identity in a tangible manner through recycled, worn, and worn out clothes from her own closet. Pieces of fabric are mementos of experiences lived, roads traveled, and growing in our own bodies through time. The warmth of a quilt, and the love, care, and patience of the work put into it, makes the idea of home more tangible. From gathering fabric of well-worn and well-enjoyed clothes to sewing the last stitches, the process of those quilts are long and can unfold throughout several years.

Agathe graduated from Concordia University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Studio Arts), and is currently pursuing a Bachelor of Education (Special Education) at UQÀM.

Ranime El Morry, Just a Lookalike, acrylic paint on canvas, 16 x 20 inches

Ranime El Morry is an international student from Egypt who came to Tiohtià:ke/Montreal to study Studio Art at Concordia University.

She comes from a background in drawing, focusing mainly on figurative representations, which are also reflected in her painting practice. She chooses to depict subject matter that revolves around the question of identity and how it can present itself in various ways. Her work is often retrospective, with a fusion of comfort and uneasiness, manifested by a diverse colour palette. The scenery in her paintings takes place in the void inside of her head that often latches onto one of the many fleeting feelings that have an impact on her psyche.

Her goal is for the connection between the audience and the artwork, whether it be light or intense, to bring a wave of familiarity to some extent, all while inviting the viewer to future introspection.

"Just a Lookalike” showcases a detailed representation of a mask. The mask appears to be made out of a paperlike texture, molded and folded over a face to show vague protruding facial features. El Morry have made this painting to try and express autistic masking and the effect it has on her. Masking her mannerisms, her authentic self, her reactions, and who she really is in order to not stand out to society and face the pain. The paper mask is supposed to represent her face, but it does not actually resemble the artist at all. The disposable paper is ever-changing to adapt to different environments and people, but it is still paper that can be easily torn. Although it knows that it is fragile, the mask feels like steel, and it is difficult to unmask around people, just as it is exhausting for El Morry to not be authentic and reveal who she actually is.