20/1/2012
Aleesa Cohene
Vtape, Toronto
The Rest is Real. Emerging curator Julia Paoli has selected the work of Aleesa Cohene as the focus of her curated solo exhibition for this year's Curatorial Incubator exhibition. She use appropriated footage from Hollywood cinema of the 1980s and 90s to construct alternative narratives paralleling the norms presented by the 'image machine' of the mass media.
Curated by Julia Paoli
Emerging curator (and recent Bard College graduate) Julia Paoli has selected the work of Aleesa Cohene as the focus of her curated solo exhibition for this year's Curatorial Incubator exhibition. Cohene is well known for her works that use appropriated footage from Hollywood cinema of the 1980s and 90s to construct alternative narratives paralleling the norms presented by the "image machine" of the mass media. Her emotionally complex and deeply resonant video work has been exhibited extensively in Canada and internationally and in 2010 and 2011 Cohene was an Ontario finalist for the prestigious Sobey Award.
Curator Julia Paoli has delved deeply into the warp and woof of meanings spinning through Cohene's complex work, writing, "As a young curator (I am prompted) to consider and develop new ways to tell familiar stories: to find historical models of influence that eschew the powerful and conventional canon. It is my hope that Cohene's work might allow us to both imagine different versions of how we tell the history of representation and rethink what shapes our identity." Her curated program features both installation works as well as single channel projection. Paoli has complemented this already rich exhibition with a resource centre. Here writing and video works selected by Aleesa Cohene provide a discursive space to show the influences on her thinking and practice, and (in Paoli's beautifully idealistic phrase) "...offering her (Cohene) the opportunity to write her own history."
The Rest is Real is the first major Canadian survey of Aleesa Cohene's work in video and installation. Her most recent video installation Yes,Angel is currently on view at The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery (Toronto) as part of the exhibition Coming After curated by Assistant Curator Jon Davies.
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Vancouver-born artist Aleesa Cohene (º1976) has been producing videos since 2001. Her work has shown in festivals and galleries across Canada as well as in Brazil, Cambodia, Germany, Netherlands, Russia, Scandinavia, Turkey, and the United States, and has won prizes at Utrecht's Impakt Festival and Toronto's Images Festival. She has participated in artist residencies in Canada, the Netherlands and Denmark. She recently completed a fellowship at the Kunsthochschule für Medien in Cologne, Germany. www.aleesacohene.com
Julia Paoli is an independent curator and writer based in Toronto, Canada. She was appointed Vtape's 2011 Curatorial Fellowship and is currently a Curatorial Intern at the Power Plant. She is a member of Pleasure Dome's Programming Collective and the 2011 Intern at FAG (Feminist Art Gallery). Paoli received her MA from the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College.
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THE PROGRAMME
Like, Like, 2009
07:00 minutes
Like, Like portrays two love-sick women. The women are composite characters created from the actions, reactions and dialogue of multiple women from multiple sources. A textile pattern that appears in Like, Like is painted in larger-than-life scale from floor to ceiling on the gallery walls. Additionally, the gallery is outfitted with aroma diffusers emitting a fragrance custom designed by the artist.
Something Better, 2008
08:00 minutes
Something Better consists of three synchronized monitors, each representing different members of a family. Spectators are introduced to several film actors who soon merge into three shifting personae: father, mother and child. Through measured picture editing, sound sampling and music remixing, the three characters interact in a microcosm where they hear each other but don't listen, look but don't see and have relationships that are simultaneously distant and intimate. Something Better recognizes that our relationships to others are constructed through mirrors of ourselves. In previous iterations of the work, a textile pattern that appears in Something Better is painted on larger-than-life scale from floor to ceiling leading up to the three-channel installation.
Supposed To, 2006
07:00 minutes
Supposed To examines how work in a capitalist system divides people from themselves. Reediting sampled footage and dialogue from science fiction films, psychological thrillers and corporate training videos, Supposed To builds a hybrid narrative of characters exhausted by work, acting out, escaping conflict and misdirected blame, and ultimately returning to an inevitable "deep wordless knowledge" that shapes our shared reality. Supposed To questions our ontological vocation, reminding us that our destiny is still unknown.
Ready to Cope, 2006
07:00 minutes
In resistance to Canada's Anti-Terrorism Act, Ready to Cope comments on the ways in which society's chronic obsession for safety and security has become both a private and public crutch. Edited from clips from horror and science fiction films, thrillers, self-help guides and motivational instruction videos, Ready to Cope is an impassioned record of collective anxiety. The characters are in an unknown tragedy: the baths they take, the halls they walk down, and the air they breathe become more important than the crisis itself. Ready to Cope is made from the moments before and after, when the plot is at an impasse and the dialogue is silenced, forming a new yet familiar narrative of defensiveness and self-protection.
All Right, 2003
07:00 minutes
Using diverse found footage sources including immigration officer training videos, emotive gestures from horror films and sound clips from Canadian news broadcasts, Cohene takes the viewer on a provocative journey through her emotional and political labyrinth of these issues. All Right poses questions around Immigration Canada's white hegemony and its fear of the "unknown" and collective expressions of apathy vis-à-vis policy making. All Right paints a challenging, lyrical portrait of a society detaching from the complex relations of "multiculturalism", immigration and global politics.
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THE CURATORIAL INCUBATOR
The Curatorial Incubator is an annual Vtape mentoring programme for emerging curators with interests in the media arts. It provides participants with workshops in practical and theoretical issues pertaining to curating time-based media as well as access to the extensive on-site Vtape resources and professional editing for their written materials.
This year, in addition to mounting this solo exhibition of Aleesa Cohene's work curated by Julia Paoli, Vtape has offered research support to three recipients of the 2011-12 Vtape Fellowship Award. Later this spring, we will launch the essays by Vtape Fellowship Award winners Alvis Choi, Ebony Haynes and Ulysses Castellanos on the Vtape website.
Image: video still from Like, Like (2009) by Aleesa Cohene
Erik Martinson
Submissions and Outreach Coordinator
Vtape
401 Richmond Street West, #452
Toronto, Ontario M5V 3A8
(ph) 416 351-1317
(fax) 416 351-1509
www.vtape.org
www.videoartincanada.ca
Opening Saturday January 21, 2012, 2-5pm
Artist in attendance
Curator's talk 3:00pm
Vtape
401 Richmond St., #452 - Toronto, ON M5V 3A8
Tuesday-Friday 11am-5pm, Saturday 12-4pm