curated byStu Monck

afterword is a reflection on the intellectual journey that we, as students in the graduating class of Visual Studies, undertook at the University of Toronto.

This exhibition showcases the programs multifaceted and open-minded framework, which allowed twenty individuals from diverse backgrounds to express their unique take on contemporary art practice. Set at a transitional moment in our artistic careers, afterword illustrates the establishment of our artistic personalities.

PREFACE

i afterword

iii afterword

This show would not have been possible without the help of the following:

Stu MonckJohn Massey Joanne TodLisa Steele

Kim Tomczak Joanne Wainman

Vicky Dingillo Elizabeth Legge

The Department of Visual Studies FASU

ASSU

We would also like to thank our professors, friends and family for their continuous support.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Aptly, the title of this years Thesis exhibition refers to an epilogue, found at the end of a piece of literature, that outlines how a creative endeavour came into being, and how the ideas and concepts were developed.

Therefore, our forward acknowledges the dedicated efforts of this years Thesis students, whose artworks for the show represent the culmination of four years study in the Visual Studies program at University of Toronto. Participants in the Thesis course start with several proposals in the first term that are edited and refined to their final projects. In addition to producing artworks, students are responsible for all aspects concerned with the show, including fundraising, publicity and the production of a catalogue.

As instructors of this course, it has been gratifying to oversee the development of ideas towards finished artworks, and to contribute to the process. It is an intense experience and one that is distinctly invigorating. We are proud to see the manifestation of this years efforts. Your energy and creativity are inspiring, and we wish you great success in your future achievements.

John Massey Joanne Tod

ii afterword

Minhee Bae was born in the States and was primarily raised in Poughkeepsie, New York. Her paintings, as well as works of other media, are generally influenced by narratives, film form and modes, and ambiguous states of personal identity.

Tamed and Dead is a series of oil paintings, which lays out elements from selected memories and stories, such as fables and folklore, to produce mythologized personal histories. I utilize visual cues that describe my childhood realizations of national identity, in contrast to my current attitudes towards the notion of nationalism.

Minhee Bae

Tamed and DeadOil on canvas2012-13Series of three 28 x 38

01 afterword

Emily is currently pursing a BA from the University of Toronto, Majoring in both Visual Studies and Fine Art History. Time based media. including video and performance art, are her main artistic mediums. Much of her work deals with themes of gender roles and identity as well as heteronormitivity.

The Stories presented are interactive portraits that reveal a number of characteristics about the subjects, from experiences to psychological make-up. The accompanying videos are my interpretation of the relationship between the subject and myself. My video portrait series is meant to be a modern day interpretation of the portrait.

Emily Butko

ETHNOGRAPHIC PORTRAITSVideo Installation2013

02 afterword

Victor was born in the UK and raised in Hong Kong. He is currently studying at the University of Toronto, majoring in Visual Studies and Fine Art History. He has been recently shaping his art focus towards mental diseases after he has found to be a Dissociative Identity Disorder patient in 2008.

Aiming to reveal the truthfulness of mental patients and rectify the outsiders misunderstanding, I am cannibalizing a portion of my personal history of suffering from Dissociative Identity Disorder (D.I.D.) into an autobiographical art piece. I translate a batch of personal diaries into a narrative illustration drawing describing the appearance and behavior of me as a mental patient.

Victor Chu

I D.I.D.Ink on paper201336 x 72

03 afterword

Mauricio is a Guatemalan born, Toronto based artist. His recent work explores distance, both as a physical and as an imaginary concept, through its psychological effects on the body, memory and identity.

Marked by a deeply modernist aesthetic, such as that found in movements such as Bauhaus,Russian constructivism and American minimalism, this series furthers an exploration of distance I began a few years ago. Distance, treated as a complex, embodied sum of psychological and corporeal sensations and emotions, is abstracted and transcribed onto the canvas, creating a dialectical conversation between the self and the outer world.

cargocollective.com/mcontrerasparedes

Mauricio Contreras-Paredes

Of constant lengths in Prussian blue.Acrylic Gouache on Wood

2012-1348 x 36

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06 afterword

Regina Efendieva was born in Moskow, Russia. She proceeded to live in a variety of cities across Europe and Asia, till finally settling overseas in Canada. She is currently studying at the University of Toronto pursuing a double major in Visual Studies and English Literature.

I intend to explore the unnatural moulding of the human body through the pressures of socialization and media. I will not cast moral aspersions, but rather challenge the view of an autonomous and fully-organic human experience, through experimenting with visual aesthetics and discomfort.

Regina Efendieva

DYSMORPHIAPencil on Paper

2012-13Series of Two 14x17

Andrew was born and raised in Toronto and is currently finishing up his degree at the University of Toronto, majoring in Sociology and Visual Studies. In the past few years Andrew has shifted his focus to the art of printmaking, concerning himself primarily with the mechanical/technical processes involved in creating Intaglio-type-ImagOn prints.

By creating unlikely narratives through cut-and-paste collage, viewers are faced with the choice to either find a rational explanation of the work or reject it completely. The images created reflect the product of convoluted thought that is derived from interactions between people and their environment; a realisation that society is much more complex than anyone can explain holistically.

Andrew Eason

FRACTURED THOUGHTIntaglio-Type Print on Paper

Series of Three - 8x10

2012-2013

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Rayana was born and raised in Dhaka, Bangladesh. She currently resides in Toronto, studying at the University of Toronto, pursuing a double major in Architecture and Visual Studies.

My work shows the dichotomy that is created in the minds of the people and the loss of Bangladeshs own culture under the influence of both Indian Bollywood and Islam and addresses peoples struggle to find their true identity under the influence of these two different cultures.

BANGLADESHWhat does it mean to be a Bangladeshi? What is my culture? Where do I belong?

Digital print 2013

07 afterword

Rayana Hossain

Before settling in Toronto, Elena Iourtaeva has lived in Moscow, Geneva and Paris. Her artistic investigations concentrate on formal characteristics of digital photography and related computerized processes. Outside her art practice, Elena is an aspiring medievalist, with academic interests in depictions of saints, abstracted animal motifs in metalwork, and marginalia in illuminated manuscripts.

BZMLN, a noun I invented, designates a sequence of physical, digital and mental alterations applied to a material, following a meditative sensibility to the aesthetic vector of a section of that material. A section is gradually transformed and refined during the process of BZMLN; a material undergoes a series of BZMLN before being exhausted.

Elena Iourtaeva

BZMLNDigital Archival Print

201313 x 20

08 afterword

Jenny Kims artistic practice revolves around the issue of identities, and the process of constructing and examining them in a cultural context. She is an interdisciplinary artist, who is always exploring new mediums. She currently works primarily with digital imaging, video, and painting.

Our identities are a series of simulated images, influenced by the ways in which we perceive reality. Every individual is a version of something, or someone that they have experienced at one point in their life. By presenting, or rather bombarding the viewer with different fictionalized identities that are presented to us as normative

Jenny Kim

Ibid.Projected audiovisual presentation2012-13

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Vivian Kong was born and raised in the Durham Region of the vast Ontarian landscape. After finishing her education at University of Toronto (majoring in Visual Studies and double minoring in Math and East Asian Studies), Vivian hopes to pursue her creative passions wherever they may take her.

I will explore intersections between personality traits (introversion/ extroversion). By finding contradictions and similarities between these vastly different temperaments, I hope to help others understand society better, by interjecting the metaphor of technology into the set definitions of social temperaments, I aim to posit new dimensions to social temperaments.

Vivian Kong

Social EnergiesAudiovisual presentation2012-13Series of Four

10 afterword

Lynn Yuhan Lin is a Toronto based artist who was born in China.With the rooted interests in materials, she is currently exploring inter-media art with everyday substances. The complexity and juxtaposition of her works illustrate the human life cycle and the relationship between man-made world and nature.

The serial abstract paintings with the juxtaposition of art media and non-art substances challenge the definition of art, reflect the excessive consumption, poke fun at the contemporary art making process, and serve the analogy of the progression of human life. It derives from personal experiences and extends to universal phenomena.

www.yuhanlin.com

Lynn Yuhan Lin

LIFEMixed Media on Panel2012-13Series of Ten 18 x 24

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Vlad Lunin was born and raised in Chervonograd, western Ukraine before moving to Toronto. He is an interdisciplinary artist working in installation of still and moving imagery. Guided by the observation of people and their environment, his ideas are founded in an interest of how things change, progress, and build.

American history of the now. I document and analyze different fields to come up with a new understanding of how complex systems work. Using only my own images, I create works that stand separate from their origin, communicating the nature of progress and interconnectedness of separate pieces that generate its own new form and reality.

Vlad Lunin

Constructing AmericaDigital Archival Print,Plexiglass Face Mount2013Series of Five 30 x 40

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Stu Moncks practice encompasses a wide range of media, including installation, photography, video and text; across these various media, his work could be characterized by an ongoing engagement with language, process, and perception. The themes explored in Moncks oeuvre are executed with a clear attention to material and conceptual clarity.

In Moncks recent photo-based works, a discourse emerges between digital images and traditional photographic principles. His process involves applying traditional photographic processes, such as cyanotype impressions, to found and appropriated images. These images, which would have otherwise escaped from collective memory, are reconfigured through chemical processes; as a result, the reworked images attain a material quality, permanence, and affinity with the history of image-making.

Stu Monck

UNTITLEDCyanotype on linen, Plexiglas

201330 x 40

13 afterword

Shayna was born and raised in Blenheim, a small town in Southern, Ontario. She is currently studying at the University of Toronto, working towards her Honours Bachelor of Arts degree with a Specialist in Visual Art and Minor in Human Geography.

My work is inspired by the mark making of tires on highways and how powerful of an act this is, not only the force it takes for it to make the mark but also the event that causes it to occur. Through using print making as my medium, I am recreating and capturing the power of tire markings from exploded tires in an image.

Shayna Moor

RUGGEDInk Prints on PaperSeries of Two 15x602013

14 afterword

Jessica Muraca is an artist and illustrator born and raised in Toronto, Ontario, who is currently pursuing a degree in Visual Studies and Architecture at the University of Toronto. Her fine art practice primarily consists of works in series, exploring typological representations of digital culture and fictional subjects.

Focusing on figurative stylization, I have become aware of the influence of conventions of attractiveness, youth, and neotenous features, as well as my internalization of these habits in my own work. Expressing my discomfort, I will explore and subvert these conventions, in pursuit of defamiliarizing them to both my viewers and myself.

Jessica Muraca

ESTRANGEDDigital photo composite

2013

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Andrew Rutherdales work presents an alien, denatured view of species in order to draw attention towards ecological issues. Employing computer graphics software and digital fabrication, the work aims to unify the virtual with the material.

Dark Precursor explores the materiality of light. Light acts as a force of physical transformation. It contains energy that affects the growth or deterioration of geological, plant and animal bodies. When it is gathered at a high intensity its effect on matter is observable. The piece employs three forms produced by laser processes in order to explore the generative potential of light.

Andrew Rutherdale

Dark PrecursorDigital Rendering

Dimensions Variable2013

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Natalie Schiabel has been studying art for the past ten years. She attended Cardinal Carter Academy for the Arts high school where she specialized in Visual Arts, and is currently completing a double major at the University of Toronto in Architectural Design and Visual Studies. She is interested in creating works on wood that are abstract, yet self referential and are based in the field of design.

My work aims to combine the fields of architecture, industrial design, art and metaphysical thought to create works which can be looked at deeply, but can also be seen strictly as design work. Evolving ideas of personal insight are represented by a focus on materiality and development of stylistic language.

Natalie Schiabel

IMMANENTMultimedia on Wood

201330 x 132

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Danit Shneiderman was born in Florida, USA and raised in Caracas, Venezuela. She moved to Canada in 2010 and lives in Toronto since then. She is currently doing a Bachelor of Arts at The University of Toronto with a Specialist in Visual Studies and a Minor in Fine Art History.

Space is subjective, but usually we have a consistent approach to it. In this installation I will generate three different realities for the viewer to experience. I will manipulate what they see and its physical form by using mirrors, projections and tricking the eye.

Danit Shneiderman

DECONSTRUCTIONMirrors on Wood

50x502013

18 afterword

Polina Teif was born in Minsk and raised in Israel and South Africa. Now residing in Toronto and exhibits primarily as a member of XXXX Collective. Works primarily in the mediums of photography, video and installation.

This series investigates the common objects we surround ourselves with. The dryer sheets and plastic sandwich bag were specifically chosen since they are inexpensive items, commonly available in all supermarkets. However, they do not constitute the basic necessities of life, subtly signaling at the privileged economic environment in which we live.

Polina Teif

Sandwich Bag (Selection Brand)Archival Photo Print

201348 x 48

19 afterword

Shellie was born in Beijing and raised in various parts of China, the United States, and Canada. Her practice takes a critical perspective on mass media and contemporary pop culture, while reflecting on nostalgia in the 21st century. She works primarily through painting, photography and installation.

Past depictions of women are easily categorized as ancient even though their influence still permeates todays culture. Mythologies unites the fabrications surrounding female icons of the past with present day constructions of women, demonstrating a criticism of the history and a cautionary reminder of the state of the present.

w w w . s h e l l i e z h a n g . c o m

Shellie Zhang

Mythologies Acrylic on Canvas

2012-13Series of Five 30x40

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