Dura | a mechanism for recalling sensibilities of community care (from any and all satellite sites such as this)

Solo Exhibition: Chiedza Pasipanodya

Commissioned by BAND Gallery
Fort York Historic Site, Toronto, Canada
July 18, 2024 - May 30, 2025

OPENING REVIEW
Written by Courtnay McFarlane (Artist | Curator | Poet)

“We gathered on a beautiful summer evening for the opening of multi-disciplinary artist Chiedza Pasipanodya’s public art installation DURA: A Mechanism for Recalling Sensibilities of Community Care (From Any and All Satellites Such As This) We were reminded that artist-poets can’t resist long titles for their work. Lol! As a gathering of mostly Black identified folk, we were reminded that we stood on Indigenous land, on ground contested, and remade. We were reminded that rivers covered-over still run beneath us. Reminded of a nearby shoreline artificially extended by landfill. Reminded of the precarity of the structures we build counter to nature that will be reclaimed by nature with floods and rivers overrunning this artifice. We were reminded of hidden geographies and buried histories. Reminded that we stood near sites of colonial battles and within sight of buildings still full of armaments, and a burial ground.

Chiedza began by acknowledging the ancestors of this land and the lands from which many of us have come. Their work recalls the power of the circles in which we have traditionally gathered and built. Recalls the structures of their ancestral homeland: communal granaries in which dried fruits were stored with a sleeping level above. Recalls the Shona people of Zimbabwe - their language (Dura meaning storehouse) and instruments (Mbira) fusing wood and metal as in this installation. Recalls a practice of community care and collective making: steel forming the structure connected to the industries in which mother and uncle have worked; 120 clay fruits made by hands of artist colleagues underneath a structure created by a group of women and non-binary metal-smiths and carpenters. Recalls the southern African land from which they have come, and the diaspora in which they/we live.”

ABOUT

This work is a public installation that manifests Chiedza Pasipanodya’s research-based practice, centered on southern African ways of being, ways of knowing, and aesthetics from a diasporic lens. Dura will be a structural interpretation of a traditional Zimbabwean communal granary. It considers the tensions between abundance/ scarcity while at Fort York Historical Site, a meeting place of military and migrant histories, geographical tributaries and myriad communities.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS & CONTRIBUTORS

Special thanks to Anne McKay, BAND Gallery - Karen Carter, Claudia Pensa Bowen, Josephine Denis, Christine Xia, Chanel Vinet, Courtnay McFarlane, Derek & Dorcas McGrath, Ferrier Metals, Hagstooth Studios, Maakost Studio, Masimba McGrath, Miles B, Misbah Ahmed, Moyo Mutamba, New Level Renovations, Rahel Elias, Samaita Dube, Sarah Edo, Shawn McGrath, Tadiwa McGrath, Tap Musewe and Yasmeen Nematt Alla for your contributions.

This public installation was commissioned by BAND Gallery in partnership with the City of Toronto and programming was supported by the Toronto Friends of Visual Arts (TFVA).

OHAYO RADIO: A Conversation Between Friends

ALEXA KUMIKO HATANAKA & JOHNNY NGHIEM

Curated by Chiedza Pasipanodya
Ino-Cho Paper Museum, Kochi, Japan
April 13–May 29, 2024

OHAYO RADIO: A Conversation Between Friends begins in Kochi, Japan as two friends, Alexa Kumiko Hatanaka and Johnny Nghiem, explore papermaking through collaborations in sculpture and photography. This exhibition symbolizes an exchange between the old and the new, the homeland and the diaspora, the traditional and the newer media and between people in different places coming together in one place — a third space. This third space, rich with cultural hybridity and play, speaks to cultural theorist Gloria Anzaldua’s ideas that identity is constructed across differences. 

In this exhibition, Hatanaka’s wearable washi sculptures, washi patchworks and koi are presented as part of a network of conversations tying back to her father’s homeland (Japan). This work exists alongside images taken before and during the making of the sculptures. The images are photographed by Nghiem who is interested in capturing gestures, atmospheric qualities and cultural nuances within his lens-based practice. For OHAYO RADIO photographs printed on washi emerging from his time in Kochi with Hatanaka in 2023 are accompanied by video vignettes from his recent travels to Vietnam—the homeland of his parents.

As they return to their homes, Hatanaka in Toronto, Canada and Nghiem in Berlin, Germany, they maintain correspondence through calls which they lovingly name, OHAYO RADIO. “Ohayo” is a colloquial term meaning “good morning” in Japanese and radio being a mode of transmitting audio through sound waves is used as an entry in point into this adventurous and warm exhibition that reflects the material products of a 1000-year-old tradition of washi at the historic Ino-Cho Paper Museum in Kochi, Japan. In this third place, away from Toronto and Berlin, OHAYO RADIO: A Conversation Between Friends is a manifestation of aliveness and conviviality at the intersections of place, material and homeland.

All works originate from a residency with Washi＋ in 2023.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS & CONTRIBUTORS

Featuring a photographic washi collaboration with Maya Fuhr. All washi in this exhibition was made by Kashiki Seishi.

Special thanks to Kayoko Ichinomiya, Sho Tanabe, Kashiki Seishi, Ayumi Hamada, Patel Brown Gallery, Victor Chin, Tatsuyuki Kitaoka, Emiri Fujimoto, Yan Li, Smokestack Studios.

This exhibition was made possible through generous funding from the Canada Council of the Arts.

Unchanging, changing and changing

ALEXA HATANAKA

Curated by Chiedza Pasipanodya
Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre, Toronto, Canada
September 23–November 25, 2023

Read more in the press release →

CURATOR’S NOTE

As I write this the precious island of Maui is burning due to climate change. As I write this a major Canadian oil corporation has been ordered to shut down its pipeline and compensate the Chippewa Indians $5.1M. We are living in a time of expansion and retraction, of immense loss and unprecedented freedoms, of unchanging and changing and changing. It has been said by many that to do two things at once is to do neither, but what if that doing is in fact one thing after all—a gesturing towards interconnectedness? What then becomes possible of these two or more things…

In Unchanging and changing and changing, a multidisciplinary exhibition by Alexa Kumiko Hatanaka at the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre (JCCC), it is this paradox that is in question. Featuring sculptural and wearable artworks and documentary footage, this exhibition is a personal reflection on traumatic events as seen through the body and the planet, and the resilience and release that has followed. It brings together two key concepts -  protective armours and what we will call inverse armours, wearable artworks. These sculptures present dichotomies of softness and linearity, rigidity and levity, and protection alongside joy and contending with one another through fashion-forward wearable garments that either shield against the storms of life or reveal in times of unapologetic liberation.

To be exhibiting at the Japanese Canadian Culture Centre is a homecoming of sorts; it is here that as a child Hatanaka studied semi-classical Nihon Buyo dance. The JCCC serves to celebrate the unique culture, history, and legacy of Japanese Canadians for the benefit of all while creating a tribute to the history of the Nikkei (diasporic) community. It is a perfect home for a deeper exploration into the breath of Hatanaka’s practice centered around washi, a thousand-year-old Japanese paper made by hand with local fibers and water. 

Though not seen explicitly, water is everywhere in this exhibition. It is integral to the making of washi paper and it was central to the choreography of the Unchanging and changing and changing Nihon Buyo dance performed by Danielle Yamashita and Katherine Yamashita, alongside Taiko drummers Jody Chan and Wy Joung Kou presented on the opening night of the exhibition. Water is the vehicle that moves the koi fish and is reflected in the numerous gyotaku fish prints (non-toxic direct prints from real fish) and linocut prints of waves and tsunami references in the panels of Hatanaka’s work. In works like Hazmat (Obachan and The Great Kantō), Hatanaka has reproduced an image of the catastrophic 1923 earthquake and tsunami that forced her grandmother to flee Japan for Canada. In other works such as For Nihon Buyo (Rain defence overcoat) and Aftershock, Tōhoku (Dancer's armour) tsunami images are reproduced again this time from the Tōhoku Disaster in 2011 which coincided with one of Hatanaka’s own personal aftershocks.

The accompanying documentary footage within the exhibition shares Hatanaka’s recent residency at Kashiki Seishi and the rapidly disappearing sustainable craft technologies that have been passed down for millennia, while a second video provides the audience with another look at the Nihon Buyo and Taiko drum performance. Scattered thoughtfully through the gallery are ephemera—several Koi fish, a symbol of courage and persistence from the Nihon-Buyō performance and delicately hung a prized fishing rod from her grandfather—both objects are also inextricably tied together through water. 

As we collectively move through these times, like fish swimming upstream against a current much stronger than us, as we navigate the unchanging and changing and changing, Hatanaka’s delicate yet durable washi works and accompanying ephemera serve as an invitation. One that encourages audiences to embrace both protecting and defending that which we care most about - our bodies, our cultures and traditions and our environment, while equally doing the very important work of demonstrating resilience and healing through the liberatory acts of dance, storytelling, music, play and joy.

— Chiedza Pasipanodya

WASHI & ARTIST’S PROCESS

“The softness of the Japanese washi paper and its transparency represent the environment where the natural materials were picked, under a clear sky and near a magnificent river. The warmth and robustness of Japanese washi paper comes from the efforts of farmers and their love for this land where they have lived for several generations. It is thanks to this strong bond between people and nature that the Kashiki paper production company was able to produce Japanese washi paper.”

— Kashiki Seishi, fourth generation paper mill in Japan where Hatanaka was artist in residence.

The durability of washi and the tenacity of its long-standing techniques behave as a symbol for resilience that resonates with Hatanaka’s diasporic identity. A dynamic bond between material and body is present, resulting in personal reflections on the various ways that connections to ancestral crafts nurture a meaningful integration of art-making, identity-making and community-building.

In her linocut print work, Hatanaka embeds impressions in the washi to convey topographical imageries that resemble chiseled snow, stone, water, earthquakes or the gesture of a map. These organic forms use pattern-making and repetition to reference mental and emotional geographies, as much as physical ones.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS & CONTRIBUTORS

Curator: Chiedza Pasipanodya | Nihon Buyo Dance & Taiko Drum Performance: Danielle Yamashita, Katherine Yamashita, Jody Chan, Wy Joung Kou | Musical Performance: Benja, Peach Luffe, DJ Velma |Documentary Video & Photography: Johnny Nghiem | Performance Video: Zachary Hertzman and Johnny Nghiem | Photography: Maya Fuhr, Holly Chang, Ashok Mathur, Darren Rigo | Advisory Support: Johnny Le | Fabrication: Yorgo Liapis, Dylan Moore | Garment Modelling: Benja, Peach Luffe, Sima Sepehri, Elissa Mielke, YGC, Leah Mersky, Felicia Daisy, Mist Walker | Production Assistance: Akash Inbakumar, Yahn Nemirovsky, Felicia Daisy, Gideon Näf, Danny Cardoso | Graphic Design: Christine Xia

Elemental: Earthen

TIM WHITEN

Curated by Chiedza Pasipanodya

January 21 – May 21, 2023

The iron that makes our blood red was made in the final moments before a star died. For all of us, then, our very lifeblood began with a spectacular death in a solar system.― Ziya Tong, The Reality Bubble

Tim Whiten’s prolific and dynamic creative practice reflects a life devoted to an inquiry into metaphysics, the nature of consciousness, alchemy and the human condition. This solo exhibition features a selection of early to recent work – from the beginning of the 1970s onward – alongside several antiquities generously loaned from the McMaster Museum of Art. Together, these objects create a space to explore Whiten’s ongoing engagements with the fundamental composition of the universe and who/what we are as human beings. Whiten’s use of charged materials is skilled and precise – he frequently works with glass, a precarious medium, highlighting its luminosity and transparency as a key to infinity and divine knowledge. He also employs base materials such as iron and stone, which slowly yet profoundly change form over time simply by interacting with essential elements found on our planet.

Elemental is part of an expanded, multi-venue retrospective and collaborative publication celebrating Tim Whiten’s extensive career, developed in partnership between the Art Gallery of Peterborough, Art Gallery of York University, Robert McLaughlin Gallery, and McMaster Museum of Art from 2022 to 2023. This series of exhibitions is thematically united by the classical elements of air, water, earth, and fire, a reference to Whiten’s interest in alchemical practices. Elemental: Earthen focuses on the element of earth and its associations with home, sustenance, power, transformation and alchemy.

Earthen is derived from the name of our planetary home, the ground we tread and are fed from, and the material, earthenware, of which early humans made their first vessels. Whiten’s drawings and sculptural work reflect an energy of permanence and infinity through their materiality. Pre-Cambrian shield stone, cast iron and sandblasted glass, are juxtaposed with materials that emit a softness and fragility, including coffee-stained hospital sheets, pillows, a dried snake –  that is both known and felt. As humans we are here only for a short while corporeally, and so the included antiquities from 8-100 BCE present an expanded timeline from which to understand the cyclical nature of healing, renewal and transformation of forms which Whiten has engaged with thematically through his cultural objects.

Tim Whiten was born in Inkster, Michigan in 1941. In 1964, he received a B.S. from Central Michigan University, College of Applied Arts and Science, and in 1966 completed his M.F.A. at the University of Oregon, School of Architecture and Allied Arts. After immigrating to Canada in 1968, he taught in the Department of Visual Arts at York University for 39 years. An award-winning educator, he was also Chair of the University’s Department of Visual Arts where he is currently Professor Emeritus. Since 1962, he has had work presented in exhibitions throughout North America and internationally and it is included in numerous private, public, and corporate collections, such as the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (both the de Young and the Legion of Honor/ Achenbach Foundation for the Graphic Arts). Whiten was recently awarded the 2022 Gershon Iskowitz Prize, and in March 2023 he was awarded a Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts. Based in Toronto, Tim Whiten is represented by Olga Korper Gallery.

EVENTS

Saturday, January 21, 2023: Opening Reception | 2 pm – 4 pm

Sunday, April 2, 2023: Talk & Tour with curators Chiedza Pasipanodya & Liz Ikiriko | 2 pm – 4 pm

The Art Gallery of Peterborough gratefully acknowledges the support of the Ontario Arts Council

Ngozi: We might listen for the shimmerings

TIMOTHY YANICK HUTNER, ANNE ZANELE MUTEMA, BUHLEBEZWE SIWANI

Ngozi: We Might Listen for the Shimmerings

Toronto Biennial of Art | Curatorial Fellowship

Curated by Chiedza Pasipanodya

March 26 - June 5, 2022

Ngozi: We Might Listen for the Shimmerings is an ongoing curatorial project grounded in ideas of belief, death, and embodied listening. Following a series of familial roadside deaths surrounded by myth and uncertainty, this exhibition embarks along tributaries of thought exploring the unfinished nature of death with three artists – Timothy Yanick Hunter, Anne Zanele Mutema, and Buhlebezwe Siwani. These artists record through sound, images, and objects interrogations and reinterpretations that are shimmering – moving in and out of focus according to the angle of ones’ gaze – while colliding with the parallel systems of colonialism and violence responsible for this break in the continuity of the life cycle. The word Ngozi itself is a shimmering word across the African continent with myriad meanings or truths such as danger in Xhosa, blessed in Igbo, an accident in Swahili, and an avenging spirit in chiShona.

ARTISTS

Anne Zanele Mutema | 72 Perth Ave

Anne Zanele Mutema’s practice invites us to consider alternative belief systems through the idea of an Event defined for her as a phenomenon located at a single point in time in the context of self, culture and history.

Systemic Necropolis is an installation engaged in a philosophical inquiry on the nature of the thing – whether we are given our identities by the objects that surround us, the use-value they provide or whether they in fact afford identities to us.

Buhlebezwe Siwani | Arsenal Contemporary Art Toronto

Buhlebezwe Siwani’s artistic practice focuses on black women, their place and role in the cultural tradition of African spirituality and religious rituals through which beliefs are performed. The presence of the black female body in her performances brings into play a subjectivity committed to repossessing and refocusing attention on historically violated and silenced, if not repressed and marginalized, black women – seers, prophets and healers belonging to a long tradition.

Timothy Yanick Hunter | Small Arms Inspection Building

Timothy Yanick Hunter’s practice considers the impact of colonial, capitalist histories, and their lasting effects in Africa and throughout the Diaspora. Hunter’s strategies of bricolage examine non-neutral relationships, centring Black and Afro-diasporic experiences as well as concurrent strategies of decolonization. His approach alternates between exploratory and didactic; with a focus on the political, cultural, and social richness of the Black Diaspora often delving into speculative narratives and the intersections of physical space, digital space, and the intangible.

PROGRAMMING

True & Functional: DARE (The Shimmering Mixtape)
Engineered by Timothy Yanick Hunter in collaboration with Chiedza Pasipanodya, this Mixtape takes form as a vinyl record at 72 Perth Avenue and Small Arms Inspection Building. DARE joins Hunter’s ongoing project “True & Functional”, which explores “shimmerings” and how we may look and listen for them. Hunter uses archival sound from Black diasporic and African artists, novelists, and collectives to tell a story of Black culture, resilience, and art.
Vinyl and design of online version by Timothy Yanick Hunter.

Editorial Sheet
Listen to the Mixtape Online

2022 Series – "Tape/Talk: Acts of Engagement" - Episode Two: Anne Zanele Mutema and Chiedza Pasipanodya

In this episode, artist Anne Zanele Mutema invites us to consider alternative belief systems through the idea of an Event defined for her as a phenomenon located at a single point in time in the context of self, culture, and history. Mutema’s work “Systemic Necropolis” reflects on ideas of space, memory, and phenomenology. 

 Produced by Roxanne Fernandes in collaboration with
Katie Jensen and Ren Bangert of Vocal Fry Studios. Music is by LAL.

Listen | Download the Transcript

IN CONVERSATION: DR. GEORGE MAHASHE AND BUHLEBEZWE SIWANI

2022 Biennial artist Buhlebezwe Siwani is joined by Dr. George Mahashe for an intimate conversation that brings together Mahashe’s ongoing research at the intersection of artistic practice, archives, and anthropology with Siwani’s work, which interrogates the patriarchal framing of the Black female body and experience within the South African context. Moderated by curator Emilie Croning, this discussion will move through tributaries of thought such as Siwani’s artistic practice on rituality, their collaborations on works such as Siwani’s Sinje Ngamajuba, and the relationship between Christianity and African spirituality with a focus on khelobedu. The program will open with a Chivanhhu-centred opening ceremony led by musician, storyteller, and lecturer Dr. Moyo Rainos Mutamba.

Made possible by the generous support of TD Bank Group, through the TD Ready Commitment, and presented in partnership with Wedge Curatorial Projects, and the Toronto Arts Council.

June 3, 2022, Virtual

gestures: life in the shadow of a volcano

TAYMAH ARMATRADING, MICHELLE CIELOSZCZYK, STEPH CLOUTIER, KASRA GOODARNEZHAD, HOLLY JO, LILY YUNRU LU, ANGELA MCINTOSH, STAR NAHWEGAHBO, COLIN ROSATI

Curated by Chiedza Pasipanodya

February 4 - 16, 2019

gestures: life in the shadow of a volcano is a multi-disciplinary exhibition that is a meditation, leaning into the weight of time, the uncertainty of life and the generosity possible in gestures. In this exhibition, nine artists unpack their experiences working alongside artist Maria Thereza Alves in Toronto and in Naples, an ancient city in the shadow of Vesuvius, an active volcano on an eastern shore of the Mediterranean.

Made possible through generous funding from the Jack Weinbaum Family Foundation, Global Experience Project.