Thirteen Ways to Summon Ghosts

May 16 to August 31st, 2018

Haunting might be described as an animated state in which an unresolved condition or event makes itself known. It is one way we are notified that what’s been concealed – or forgotten – is very much alive and present. In our contemporary culture of disposability, proliferation and excess, grappling as we are with the legacies of colonialism, with so many suppressed histories of dispossession and silencing, we might ask what artists, and art itself, can do? How can art, to reframe a question posed by renowned American sociologist Avery Gordon, reckon with all that modern history has rendered ghostly?

This exhibition considers the work of thirteen Canadian artists of diverse origins and experience, for whom haunting, it might be argued, is an artistic strategy. Through works of sound, sculpture, installation, painting, garments, print, and video, these artists alter our experience of being in time; they challenge the ways we separate past, present, and future. 13 Ways to Summon Ghosts is guest-curated by Kimberly Phillips and features the work of Abbas Akhavan, Brady Cranfield, Brenda Draney, Betty Goodwin, Vanessa Kwan, Lyse Lemieux, Tanya Lukin Linklater, Cindy Mochizuki, Jacqueline Hoàng Nguyễn, Ryan Peter, Carol Sawyer, Kathleen Ritter, and Jin-me Yoon.

Photograph by SITE Photography