Art is (bleep)

Art is (bleep) intervention was first staged at the opening of the Third Space exhibition on June 21, 2013 at York Quay Gallery in Toronto. Our intention was to bring attention to the censoring of three pages from The Book of Illuminations at the discretion of the curator in spite of earlier discussion and agreement with the artist.

We staged the intervention a second time during the Tirgan Festival, on July 20, 2013. See the video documentation of the very interesting discussion with the audience that took place during the curator’s tour of the exhibition.

The participants were Sarah Abu-Sharar, Naomi Binder Wall, Roberta Buiani and Gita Hashemi. Main photographer was Maryam Taghavi.

What do you think about censorship? Scroll down to leave a comment.


Below are images of the first staging of the intervention at the opening on June 21. Throughout the reception, gallery visitors were invited to take a picture with the performers.

 


This is the discussion that took place with the audience in response to our intervention during the curator’s tour of the exhibition. We had intended to stage a similar silent intervention as we had done earlier, but we were prevented from doing that by the Harbourfront Centre’s and Tirgan Festival’s people. We decided we would just join the audience during the curator’s tour. Eventually, we found we had to intervene more explicitly to encourage a meaningful conversation about the work and its intentions.

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