York University’s Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change (EUC) has launched FRACTURE, a multimedia collection of new graduate and undergraduate students’ artworks, curated by Andil Gosine, EUC professor and co-ordinator of the Faculty’s Environmental Arts and Justice program. The exhibitions will be presented throughout the 2021-22 academic year.
The works incorporated in FRACTURE illustrate themes taught in a summer course on social and environmental crisis, particularly the moments that emerge in the resulting fractures and fissures of ongoing social institutions and processes.
The series kicked off with recent master of environmental studies graduate Amber Williams-King’s series of collage works, which were produced during her time at EUC. Recently published in PREE literary journal, you can find Williams-King’s collages hanging in the ZigZag Gallery in the Health, Nursing and Environmental Studies (HNES) Building on York’s Keele Campus. Williams-King recently received the Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean’s Michael Baptista Essay Prize for her paper titled “When Palm Trees Break: The Fractured Horizons of Black Caribbean World-Making in the Midst of Crisis.”
Up next in the series is Kafia Abdulkader’s Laughing Black film premiere on Friday, Nov. 19 at 6 p.m. Inspired by topics explored in a summer course on cultural production works, the film uses laughter, from a Black female perspective, to censor the systemic white gaze upon the brown body. Register for the event here.
Aja Moore and Farida Abdelmeguied will welcome the new year by presenting their works on Friday, Jan. 14, 2022. Presenting an excerpt on her thesis followed by a mindful meditation, Moore will examine the theme of nature, particularly invasive plants and their unconscious and unbiased destruction of native land. Continuing the theme of spoken word, Abdelmeguied will perform a set of poems that explore the transformative stages of grief.
On Friday, Jan. 21, 2022, current undergraduate student Ruth O’Sullivan will present her exhibition of handmade outfits and refurbished garments. Motivated by the themes of rupture, change and Professor Gosine’s work around gender, O’Sullivan’s work is representative of her personal relationship with identity and sexual identity.
Fatemeh Gharibi and Alireza Gorgani Dorcheh will continue the series on Friday, Feb. 11 at 3 p.m. with a film premiere. Continuing the theme of identity and sexual orientation, the new immigrants from Iran delve into those as well as themes of oppression, freedom, and navigating Western society and its ideologies.
FRACTURE will culminate with the Eco-Arts Media Festival in March 2022, which will include films by Jess Ross and Snjezana Pruginic, and a sculpture exhibition by Maria “Flora” Gomez.
FRACTURE is a companion and prelude to everything slackens in the wreck, an exhibition curated by Gosine for the Ford Foundation Gallery in New York, which is scheduled to open in spring 2022.
“I am so impressed by Amber’s and Kafia’s work as thinkers and creators. They epitomize the best aspirations of our program, to do work that is meaningful, complex, deeply engaged – and makes a difference in the world. I can’t wait to share the other works ahead of us, which provoke us to reflect on and provide routes for us, in the midst of this fracture,” saidl Gosine.