Art Metropole / DIFFICULT PEOPLE

Events > Lecture

28 Feb. 2018

DIFFICULT PEOPLE

A reading and performative lecture by Amy Fung and Divya Mehra

Speakers: Amy Fung and Divya Mehra

Time: 7-9 pm

As a public experiment and ongoing private conversation, artist Divya Mehra (Scorpio) and writer Amy Fung (Scorpio) embark on a series of public readings that trace their respective, and at times, overlapping experiences of living and working in the Canadian Prairies. Specifically, Mehra’s performative lecture explores memory, race, death, and the service industry in a series of non-linear short stories and poetics. The performance, as well as her overall practice, often asks “how do we exist within the crushing indifference of our day to day?” Sharing similar intentions of re-examining the mundane violence of white supremacy, Fung will be reading an excerpt from a new work in progress, Before I was a critic, I was a human being.

Amy Fung is a writer, researcher and curator born in Kowloon, Hong Kong, and currently based in Toronto, Canada. She received her Masters in English and Film Studies from the University of Alberta in 2009 with a specialization in criticism, poetics, and the moving image. Her writings can be found in print and online publications such as Canadian Art, Art Papers, C Magazine, and Frieze, among many more since 2002. Most recently, Fung held the position of Artistic Director of IMAGES Festival, Toronto between 2015 – 2017. She is a co-founder of MICE Magazine and has served on numerous boards and juries across the country. She is currently writing her first book on Canadian art forthcoming 2018.

Working in sculpture, print, drawing, artist books, installation, advertising, video, and most recently film, Divya Mehra is known for her meticulous attention to the interaction of form, medium, and site. Through an acerbic tone, she addresses the long-term effects of colonization and institutional racism. Re-contextualizing references found in music, literature, and current affairs, she contends with contemporary expressions of societies continuously formed by their colonial roots. Mehra’s work has been included in a number of exhibitions and screenings, notably with Creative Time, MoMA PS1, MTV, and The Queens Museum of Art (New York), MASS MoCA (North Adams), Artspeak (Vancouver), Art Metropole, and The Images Festival (Toronto), The Beijing 798 Biennale (Beijing), Bielefelder Kunstverein (Bielefeld), and Latitude 28 (Delhi). Mehra holds an MFA from Columbia University and is represented in Toronto by Georgia Scherman Projects.

Image

Promotional image for Difficult People - Amy Fung + Divya Mehra. Courtesy the artists.