Reciprocal Relations: “A touch of before, now and then.”

“A touch of before, now and then.”

June 22 - 27, 2023

CFMDC.tv

1411 Dufferin St Unit D, Toronto, ON M6H 4C7

“A touch of before, now and then.” is the moment when briefly you glimpse a smell, a touch, a sound and an image which all together remind you of the taste of a memory. Is it an empty place, a lonesome one? Is it a crowded gathering or an abandoned village? Or maybe it’s the dunes that have taken over a myth? Exhibited in dialogue, three works by artists Mivan Makia, Qiuli Wu and soJin Chun exchange with one another to the sound of a breeze, of a process, of a cleanse and a reviving. 

Presented as part of Reciprocal Relations, CFMDC’s first installation “A touch of before, now and then.” invites you to come, sit, breathe, and listen; at your own pace, on your own time and somewhere between all of us, between the diasporas, the here and the there, the knowing and not knowing, you can create your own sense of process and of the ways in which landscapes are traces. 

Presented works: 

Abandoned by soJin Chun

Red Tunnel by Qiuli Wu

Processing…Cleaning…Refreshing… by Mivan Makia

Curated by Franci Duran & Nada El-Omari

A zine will be available for pickup on site featuring interviews with each artist. 

This installation is part of Reciprocal Relations. [link to https://www.cfmdc.org/reciprocal-relations]

Artist Bios

soJin Chun is a Toronto-based artist/curator/facilitator that explores the alternative dialogues that emerge in-between cultures and disciplines. With a focus on collaboration, her work unpacks identities and narratives that exist outside of dominant representations. soJin's diverse art practice has been informed by her personal experience living in the Korean diaspora in Bolivia and Canada. Through International artist residencies, soJin has developed a collaborative art practice working with local communities to resist stereotypes, gentrification and displacement. Chun has participated in international film festivals such as the Oberhausen International Film Festival (2020). She has exhibited Internationally in DIY art spaces, galleries and museums. In 2021, she participated in a group exhibition titled, Bop, Art & Labour at Alternative Artspace Ipo in Seoul, Korea. soJin’s video works are represented by GIV (Montreal), CFMDC (Toronto) and V-Tape (Toronto). Chun has a B.A. in Applied Arts from Ryerson University and a Masters in Communications and Culture from Ryerson/York Universities. She is currently a Tenure-Track Assistant Professor at the OCAD University in Toronto. 

Mivan Makia is an Iraqi-Kurdish filmmaker, documentary photographer, and researcher living and working between Canada and the United Arab Emirates. Interested in self-portraiture and middle eastern cultural expression, the process in both her independent and commissioned work rely on research, experimentation and interdisciplinary studies. Using a practice that links identity and space, her work is concerned with the ever fluctuating perspective of being a transient body.

She holds a BFA in Film Production and has six years of experience in the film industry, both independent and commercial. Makia has exhibited her work in shows as well as screenings internationally including Canada, USA, England, France, and the UAE.

Qiuli Wu is an emerging filmmaker from Foshan, China. In her explorations of the film medium, she has focused on sculpting moving images into a “tortuous path”. Along this path—be it a labyrinth, a trail in the forest, or a dark tunnel of fleeting lights—spectators follow the mobility of camera-eyes and are thereby immersed in shapeshifting landscapes of narrative. Qiuli is also interested in the tactility of moving images—images that could almost touch and “itch” your eyeballs—and how these images can re-enact the projection of sensual desires. These two focuses lead her to interpret cinema as a twofold illusion between a train ride and a phantom ride. 

Curator Bios

Franci Duran is a Chilean-Canadian experimental media artist who creates films, video installation, and 2D, photo-based, mixed-media works about history, memory, and violence. Duran has exhibited internationally at film festivals and venues including Edinburgh International Film Festival, International Film Festival at Rotterdam, HotDocs, Arkipel, Anthology Film Archives, Los Angeles Film Forum, John Hansard Gallery, and VideoPool. Duran holds an M.F.A. from York University and a B.A.H. from Queen’s University. Her practice has been supported by research, travel, and production grants from the Canadian arts councils.

Nada El-Omari is a filmmaker and writer of Palestinian and Egyptian origin based in Montreal, Quebec. Her practice and research interests centre on the intergenerational transmissions of memories, displacement, and the stories of belonging and identity which she explores through a poetic, hybrid lens. Focusing on process and fragments in text, sound, and image, Nada explores different ways to self-narrate new ways to speak hybridity and self. Her films have recently been shown at Images Festival, Arab Film & Media Institute NYC, Nuit Blanche Toronto, Les Instants Vidéos Marseille, NYU’s Orphan Films Symposium, Belfast Film Festival, Palestine Cinema Days, Visions Cairo, Toronto Palestine Film Festival, and on Shasha and Tenk. Her work has also been published in Montreal Serai and qumra journal. She is currently displaying a digital project commissioned by the Art Gallery of Ontario (on view at:1-home.net) in collaboration with Sonya Mwambu. El-Omari holds a BFA in Film Production and an MFA in Film from York University.