Presenting Manar Moursi: The Loudspeaker and the Tower, organized and circulated by Trinity Square Video and SAVAC.
Curated by Toleen Touq and Emily Fitzpatrick
Opening reception: May 28, 12-2pm
Artist-talk/tour: May 28 at 2pm
Through an immersive environment constructed of coloured lights, megaphones, masks, videos and sculptures, Toronto-and Boston-based artist, designer, and architect Manar Moursi presents a multitude of considerations to the viewer: What if singular patriarchal voices of religious sermons were interpreted through mime and dance? How would neon lights adorning mosque minarets look as sculptural objects? How do residents of Cairo challenge authoritative architectures and urban master plans, whilst creating new meanings for public space and land use? By that token, what shapes can we abstract from these biographical networks of the megalopolis?
Using the mosque as its starting point, The Loudspeaker and the Tower examines the apparatus of the minaret as a vertical symbol of power and as a horizontal multiplier of official and unsanctioned narratives. Moursi’s installation revolves around a set of associated characters — residents of once agricultural lands, mosque custodians, imams, architects, artists, and a parrot — to further understand the radical complexities of these structures.
The exhibit is organized and circulated by Trinity Square Video and SAVAC with support from Ontario Arts Council.
Artist bio:
Manar Moursi is a Kuwait-born Egyptian researcher, architect, and artist, currently based between Montreal and Cambridge. Her work considers how power is articulated in small day-to-day gestures in the built environment or in personal relationships. She is often guided in her making with sensitivity and curiosity to sensory experiences. Accordingly, she works with multiple media: artist books, installation, video installation, and sculpture. Lately, Manar works with the personal as political and uses her own body and personal history in performance and video works. Playfulness with language and text is also a running thread in her work. Manar is currently working on a Ph.D. in the History, Theory, and Criticism of art and architecture group at MIT while maintaining her artistic practice.
About Trinity Square Video
Trinity Square Video is a space to re-imagine media arts. Founded in 1971, it is one of Canada’s first artist-run centres and its oldest media arts centre. Trinity Square strives to create supportive environments, encouraging artistic and curatorial experimentation that challenge medium specificity through education, production and presentation supports.
About SAVAC
SAVAC (South Asian Visual Arts Centre) is a non-profit, nomadic artist-run organization based out of Toronto dedicated to developing and promoting the works of artists and cultural practitioners of colour located across both Turtle Island and the Global South.
For over 20 years, SAVAC has operated without a gallery space as an explicit, political choice.
Instead, we push for frameworks of self-representation within the Canadian arts ecology and partner with galleries, institutions and museums to integrate artists and curators of colour into the curatorial and programming practices of those institutions.
For more information visit savac.net.
