ORAIB TOUKAN | WHEN THINGS OCCUR
17 MARCH 2018 – 28 APRIL 2018
presented in collaboration with the Images Festival, 12 APRIL 2018 – 20 APRIL 2018
IMAGES FESTIVAL RECEPTION & ARTIST TALK
SATURDAY 14 APRIL 2018, 2:00PM at YYZ
TALK WILL BEGIN AT 3:00PM at the Common on the 4th floor.
ORAIB TOUKAN| WHEN THINGS OCCUR
When Things Occur is based on Skype conversations with Gaza-based photographers, fixers and drivers who were behind specific images that were transmitted from screen to screen in the summer of 2014. The film probes the face of mourning and grief- its digital embodiment, transmission, and representation. It asks how the gaze gets channeled within the digital realm, and how empathy travels, digitally. Equally, how the documentary signifier – and its abstraction – operate when viewing suffering. What exactly is viewing suffering ‘at a distance’- and how many meters or kilometers is that? What is the behavior and political economy of the image of war? And who is the ‘local’ in the representation of war? What is the daily routine of those who represent war?
ORAIB TOUKAN is an artist and Clarendon Scholar at the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford. She is visiting tutor at the Ruskin School of Art and the International Academy of Fine Arts in Ramallah, Palestine. Until Fall 2015, she was head of the Arts Division and Media Studies program at Bard College at Al Quds University, Palestine. Recent exhibitions include the Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Heidelberger Kunstverein, Qalandia International, The Center for Contemporary Art Glasgow, the Asia Pacific Triennial, the Mori Art Museum, and the 11th Istanbul Biennale.