Impostor Cities
Emmanuel Osahor + Seeing the Invisible
Kapwani Kiwanga Summer 2023
moca.ca
Presenting Sponsor
Welcome to MOCA
Toronto’s Summer
2023 Exhibitions
This summer at the museum, Toronto and other cities across Canada will be featured in Impostor Cities, an exhibition that exposes how the spaces we live and work in appear as other places in film and television. Through clips from over 3,000 films and television shows shot in Canada—from the backdrop for action heroes in X-Men and Pacific Rim, to the dramatic settings of Brokeback Mountain— as well as video interviews and green-screen opportunities, this multimedia project is a playful critique of location and context, examining movies as powerful sites of architectural experience, expression and authenticity.
Across Floors 1 – 2, the first major survey exhibition in Canada of Canadian-French artist Kapwani Kiwanga continues. Remediation focuses on Kiwanga’s recent research into how humans and the natural environment navigate tensions between toxicity and regeneration. Kiwanga’s large-scale installations involve a wide variety of materials from plants that filter toxins from our environment, to PVC inflatables and industrial shade cloth. The exhibition is all the more timely given the recent announcement that Kiwanga will represent Canada at the 60th Venice Biennale in 2024.
These exhibitions are complemented by the works of Toronto-based artists, including a new painting installation by Emmanuel Osahor in MOCA’s North End Gallery, a sound installation by Kieran Adams in the South Stairwell and a lightbox work by art collective FASTWÜRMS.
Kapwani Kiwanga, Elliptical Field, 2023. Installation with sisal fibre and steel. Installation View, Remediation, at MOCA Toronto. Courtesy the artist; Galerie Poggi, Paris; Galerie Tanja Wagner, Berlin; and Goodman Gallery, Cape Town, Johannesburg, and London. © ADAGP, Paris / SOCAN, Montreal (2022). Photo: Laura Findlay.
Kapwani Kiwanga
Remediation
Floor 01 + 02
Through July 23 2023
The exhibition is co-organized by MOCA Toronto and the Remai Modern, Saskatoon, where it will be presented in Fall 2023.
Kiwanga’s artistic practice has long underscored the importance of nature’s role in determining the course of history—not only through evolution, but through nature’s ever-shifting response to human intervention. As she has delved more deeply into specific environmental events and organic qualities, Kiwanga’s installations and sculptural gestures have become increasingly captivating, both physically and aesthetically. They arouse our curiosity through colour, form and texture, while exposing how destinies of power and selfinterest preside over the natural world.
For her exhibition at MOCA, Kiwanga presents five new commissions, including a site-specific version of her ongoing sisal installations, as well as flooring and window interventions, alongside key existing artworks, such as an updated series of inflatable vivariums. Through this curated selection, Kiwanga expands on her research into how botany has long held a relationship to exploitation and acts of resistance, and how plant life has and may intervene in the rejuvenation of contaminated environments.
Impostor Cities Floor 03
June 2 - July 23 2023
Impostor Cities celebrates the metropolises and buildings across Canada that pose as cinematic doubles, powerfully challenging visitors to think about authenticity at a moment when the blurring of fact and fiction on-screen is particularly significant.
The exhibition includes clips from thousands of films and television shows shot in Canada that explore modernist architecture, historic neighbourhoods and famous cityscapes from Toronto to St. John’s to Victoria. A green-screen installation projects visitors into dreamlike landscapes featuring these Canadian contexts, and a series of interviews presents discussions with industry insiders, including Atom Egoyan, David Cronenberg, Sook-Yin Lee and Sarah Polley.
Impostor Cities is conceptualized and curated by Thomas Balaban, David Theodore and Jennifer Thorogood, and was initially commissioned by the Canada Council for the Arts for the 2020 Canadian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale of Architecture. The exhibition is now being fully realized for the first time in a site-specific composition for MOCA Toronto.
Kapwani Kiwanga, Keyhole, 2023. Steel structure, plants, water, soil, pea gravel, LED grow lights, air pump. Installation View, Remediation, at MOCA Toronto. Courtesy the artist; Galerie Poggi, Paris; Galerie Tanja Wagner, Berlin; and Goodman Gallery, Cape Town, Johannesburg, and London. © ADAGP, Paris / SOCAN, Montreal (2022). Photo: Laura Findlay.
Impostor Cities Green Screen Icons.
Seeing the Invisible
MOCA Toronto
Sorauren Park + High Park
Through Sept 30 2023
MOCA presents the acclaimed augmented reality (AR) contemporary art exhibition Seeing the Invisible in collaboration with the City of Toronto and Toronto Parks, Forestry and Recreation. The exhibition includes 13 AR works by internationally recognized artists such as Isaac Julien, Pamela Rosenkranz and Ai Weiwei. The route includes locations at MOCA, Sorauren Park and throughout High Park, taking visitors on an exploration of virtual art and nature as the artworks are seen and activated using a mobile app. The entire programme is free.
Seeing the Invisible was initiated and organized by the Jerusalem Botanical Gardens in partnership with Outset Contemporary Art Fund.
Emmanuel Osahor
These days
North End Gallery
June 2 - July 23 2023
Emmanuel Osahor’s artwork engages with beauty as a necessity for survival and a precursor to thriving. His paintings depict natural spaces as complicated sanctuaries in which manifestations of beauty and care are ever present. He draws the viewer into fictional garden scenes, offering imaginary but recognizable spaces as potential sites for contemplation and wellbeing.
For MOCA, Osahor has composed an installation that brings the sky, in a multiplicity of hues, into focus as a site of wonder and possibility. In dialogue with his uninhabited painting, a series of palm-moulded ceramic birds add life and whimsy, as well as an additional reference to the importance of the artist’s hand for his craft.
Coming Up
Additional summer programming includes artist talks, exhibition tours, performances, outdoor walking tours of Seeing the Invisible, Free Friday Nights powered by Scotiabank, childrens workshops on TD Community Sundays and MOCA’s Youth Council Programme. For detailed information please ask at MOCA’s Welcome Desk or go to moca.ca
Emmanuel Osahor, These days, 2023. Courtesy the artist and Galerie Nicolas Robert. Mel O’Callaghan, Pneuma, 2021. Courtesy the artist and Seeing the InvisibleVisionary Supporters Gilles & Julia Ouellette
Castlepoint Numa
Kapwani Kiwanga
Remediation
Presenting Sponsor
The Price Family Anonymous
Lead Supporter
Richard & Donna Ivey
Major Supporter
Contributing Supporters
Larry & Susan Dime
Anonymous
Liza Mauer & Andrew Sheiner
The Michelle Koerner Family Foundation
Emmanuel Osahor
These days
Foundational Supporter
Seeing the Invisible
Foundational Supporter
Major Supporter
Kiki & Ian Delaney
Foundational Supporters
Supporter
Robin & Malcolm Anthony
Contributing Supporter
Andrea Bielecki & Scott McLorie
Tiana Koffler Boyman & Marc Boyman
158 Sterling Road
Toronto / moca.ca
Kapwani Kiwanga, Vivarium: Apomixis, 2023. PVC transparent, steel, colour, MDF. Installation View, Remediation, at MOCA Toronto. Courtesy the artist; Galerie Poggi, Paris; Galerie Tanja Wagner, Berlin; and Goodman Gallery, Cape Town, Johannesburg, and London. © ADAGP, Paris / SOCAN, Montreal (2022). Photo: Laura Findlay.