Examining nature symbolism, territorial resistance, and solidarity economies connected to land and water, Calgary-based Miruna Dragan’s When Either But Not Both Are True traces the contours of embodiment and the agency of more-than-human worlds. The exhibition explores the limits of human comprehension alongside material manifestations of the unknown, the underground, and the under-worldly. Exploring dreaming, divination, energy economies, and logic systems, the project engages human relationships with the natural world in order to question our interactions with the physical spaces we inhabit.
Sep 06, 2018 – Dec 01, 2018
Past
When Either But Not Both Are True
Miruna Dragan
Curated by Christine Shaw
Curated by Christine Shaw
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- Artist
- Miruna Dragan
Miruna Dragan (1975, Bucharest, Romania) is based in Calgary. With an intuitive approach, Dragan responds to observed synchronicities through a broad range of methods and materials, toward a subjective reimagining of archetypal myths and landscapes. Reflecting themes of dispersion and transcendence, both as individual pieces and collectively within immersive environments, her works offer themselves as tools for mystical experience. Recent exhibition venues include Museo de la Ciudad in Queretaro Mexico (2012 & 2019), the Esker Foundation in Calgary (2013), the Alberta Biennial (2013), G Gallery in Toronto (2014), Nanaimo Art Gallery (2015), Southern Alberta Art Gallery (2016/17), Nickle Galleries at University of Calgary (2017), Division Gallery in Toronto (2017), and The New Gallery in Calgary (2017).
- Curator
- Christine Shaw
Christine Shaw is Director/Curator of the Blackwood Gallery and Associate Professor of Curatorial Studies in the Department of Visual Studies at the University of Toronto Mississauga, a Research Fellow & Visiting Scholar in Art, Culture Technology (ACT) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Curatorial Research Fellow, Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts (2021–2023).
Shaw’s work convenes, enables, and amplifies the transdisciplinary thinking necessary for understanding our current multi-scalar historical moment and co-creating the literacies, skills, and sensibilities required to adapt to the various socio-technical transformations of our contemporary society. She has applied her commitment to compositional strategies, epistemic disobedience, and social ecologies to multi-year curatorial projects including Take Care (2016–2019), an exhibition-led inquiry into care, exploring its heterogeneous and contested meanings, practices, and sites, as well as the political, economic, and technological forces currently shaping care; The Work of Wind: Air, Land, Sea (2015–2023), a variegated series of curatorial and editorial instantiations of the Beaufort Scale of Wind Force exploring the relentless legacies of colonialism and capital excess that undergird contemporary politics of sustainability and climate justice; and OPERA-19: An Assembly Sustaining Dreams of the Otherwise (2021–2029), a decentralized polyvocal drama in four acts taking up asymmetrical planetary crisis, differential citizenship, affective planetary attention disorder, and a strategic composition of worlds. She is the founding editor of The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (Blackwood, 2018–ongoing), and co-editor of The Work of Wind: Land (Berlin: K. Verlag, 2018) and The Work of Wind: Sea (Berlin: K. Verlag, 2023).
Shaw’s work convenes, enables, and amplifies the transdisciplinary thinking necessary for understanding our current multi-scalar historical moment and co-creating the literacies, skills, and sensibilities required to adapt to the various socio-technical transformations of our contemporary society. She has applied her commitment to compositional strategies, epistemic disobedience, and social ecologies to multi-year curatorial projects including Take Care (2016–2019), an exhibition-led inquiry into care, exploring its heterogeneous and contested meanings, practices, and sites, as well as the political, economic, and technological forces currently shaping care; The Work of Wind: Air, Land, Sea (2015–2023), a variegated series of curatorial and editorial instantiations of the Beaufort Scale of Wind Force exploring the relentless legacies of colonialism and capital excess that undergird contemporary politics of sustainability and climate justice; and OPERA-19: An Assembly Sustaining Dreams of the Otherwise (2021–2029), a decentralized polyvocal drama in four acts taking up asymmetrical planetary crisis, differential citizenship, affective planetary attention disorder, and a strategic composition of worlds. She is the founding editor of The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (Blackwood, 2018–ongoing), and co-editor of The Work of Wind: Land (Berlin: K. Verlag, 2018) and The Work of Wind: Sea (Berlin: K. Verlag, 2023).
The Blackwood Gallery gratefully acknowledges the operating support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the University of Toronto Mississauga.
This exhibition is presented in conjunction with The Work of Wind: Air, Land, Sea, a year-long project series that aims to foster a deeper public awareness of the complex entanglements of ecologies of excess, environmental legacies of colonialism, the financialization of nature, contemporary catastrophism, politics of sustainability, climate justice, and resilience. It sets out to develop durable visual-cultural literacies and invites publics to create new encounters in the common struggle for a future.
This exhibition is presented in conjunction with The Work of Wind: Air, Land, Sea, a year-long project series that aims to foster a deeper public awareness of the complex entanglements of ecologies of excess, environmental legacies of colonialism, the financialization of nature, contemporary catastrophism, politics of sustainability, climate justice, and resilience. It sets out to develop durable visual-cultural literacies and invites publics to create new encounters in the common struggle for a future.
The Blackwood
University of Toronto Mississauga
3359 Mississauga Road
Mississauga, ON L5L 1C6
[email protected]
(905) 828-3789
The galleries are currently open. Hours of operation: Monday–Saturday, 12–5pm, Wednesdays until 8pm.
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The Blackwood is situated on the Territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit, Seneca, and Huron-Wendat.