Group Exhibition OF THE SACRED
- Farah Al Qasimi
- Kaya Joan
- Bea Parsons
- Yelaine Rodriguez
- Whyishnave Suthagar
OF THE SACRED testifies to the survival of personal beliefs, spiritual traditions, and religious practices in the face of colonialism and migrations. In their practices, artists Farah Al Qasimi, Kaya Joan, Bea Parsons, Yelaine Rodriguez, and Whyishnave Suthagar trace cultural inheritances of faith, lineages of intergenerational knowledge, and the syncretism of beliefs that emerge in times of turbulent change and upheaval.
Blending aspirations of the future with inherited beliefs, Jamaican-Vincentian-Kanien’kehá:ka artist Kaya Joan paints elaborate dreamscapes that feature swirling celestial forms and otherworldly entities. The artist’s work opens portals that trace spiritual lineages passed down from their ancestors—from across the Caribbean and Turtle Island—and combine Black and Indigenous futurisms with the artist’s vision of hope for a utopic future.
Yelaine Rodriguez is an Afro-Dominican artist who looks to the syncretism of Afro-Caribbean belief systems—including Voodoo and Santeria—originating in the Yoruban faith, a religion brought to the Caribbean from West Africa as a result of the transatlantic slave trade. The artist stages and photographs scenes in which individuals outfitted in lushly patterned and textured costumes—of the artist’s own design—are depicted in tableau-style settings as the deities from these various faiths. These scenes are printed onto textiles with ornate, decorative elements to create religious tapestries. These works pay reverence to these deities while challenging the often Eurocentric assumptions made of Afro-Caribbean religions.
Emirati artist Farah Al Qasimi’s Um Al Naar (2019), Arabic for “mother of fire,” is a tongue-in-cheek, feature-length film that follows the peculiar storytelling of the eponymously-named jinn, a genie from Arabic folklore. The jinn, outfitted in floral sheets, narrates the history of the changing face of Ras Al Kjairmah, the greater region of the United Arab Emirates, and local folklore through centuries of foreign occupation and religious imposition.
Bea Parsons is an artist of Cree, Scottish, and French ancestry whose surreal prints convey a symbolic visual language of natural imagery and abstracted self-portraiture, which give way to metaphors of inner states and convictions. Inspired by Cree traditions, the artist’s works approach the concept of spiritual oneness between what she sees as competing identities within herself.
Whyishnave Suthagar is a Tamil-Canadian artist whose meditative installations use black light and light-reactive threads to outline imagery drawn from ancient mythologies, dreams, and memories. As an homage to her dual cultural identity, mandalas often feature in her work—a practice passed down matrilineally across generations, which she learned from her mother while growing up in Canada.
OF THE SACRED follows the courageous resilience of people, their communities, and their beliefs as they thrive across generations of displacements prompted by settler-colonialism and forced migrations. Through their works, the artists reflect on personal histories and familial legacies of endurance against dominant cultures where their beliefs have been positioned in the periphery. At the heart of this exhibition, these sacred practices that we choose to carry forward are forms of survival—of finding ways to persevere—both collectively and as individuals.
Curated by Noor Alé and Claudia Mattos (AXIS Curatorial)
Presented in partnership with Critical Distance Centre for Curators
Farah Al Qasimi (b. 1991, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates; lives and works in Brooklyn, NY) works with photography, video, music and performance. Her work has been featured in exhibitions at the Contemporary Art Museum, St Louis; Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai; CCS Bard Galleries at the Hessel Museum of Art, New York; The Third Line, Dubai; The List Visual Arts Center at MIT, Cambridge; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto. She has participated in residencies at the Delfina Foundation, London; Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine; and is a recipient of the Art Basel Miami Legacy Purchase Program Prize, the New York NADA Artadia Prize; an Aaron Siskind Individual Photographer’s Fellowship; and the 2020 Capricious Photo Award. Her work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, UAE; the Tate Modern, London; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge; and Huis Marseille, Museum for Photography, Amsterdam. Al Qasimi received her BA from Yale University and her MFA from the Yale School of Art. Her first monograph, Hello Future, published by Capricious in 2021, was shortlisted for the Aperture/Paris Photo Book of the Year Award.
Kaya Joan is a multidisciplinary Afro-Caribbean (Jamaican/Vincentian)-Indigenous (Kanien’keh :ka) artist living in T’karonto (Dish with One Spoon treaty territory). Joan earned their BFA in OCAD University’s Indigenous Visual Culture program, where the artist was the recipient of the Indigenous Visual Culture Medal. Their work has been shown at the Images Festival, Xpace Cultural Centre, Durham Art Gallery, and Cooper Cole Gallery, among others.
Bea Parsons is an artist of Cree, Scottish, and French ancestry who works in painting, drawing, and printmaking. Parsons holds an MFA from Columbia University and a BFA from Concordia University. She taught studio art at the University of Texas in Austin and UC Davis in California. Her work has been exhibited throughout Canada and the United States. Parsons lives and works in Montreal.
Yelaine Rodriguez is an Afro-Dominican, US-based artist, educator, curator, and cultural organizer. She is completing her MA in Latin American and Caribbean Studies/Museum Studies at NYU and received a BFA in Fashion Design from The New School. Rodriguez has exhibited her work at Longwood Art Gallery, NY; American Museum of Natural History, NY; El Centro Cultural de España, Mexico; and Centro León Biennial XXVII, Dominican Republic. She lives and works in NYC.
Whyishnave Suthagar is an installation artist and graphic designer who received a BFA from McMaster’s School of the Arts. She has shown her work at the McMaster Museum of Art, the Gladstone Hotel, MOCA Toronto, Artscape Daniels Launchpad, and Nuit Blanche. She lives and works in Toronto.