RELATIONS: Diaspora and Painting, Featuring Manuel Mathieu and Firelei Báez: Esker Foundation | Inglewood, Calgary, AB, Canada

This group exhibition explores the multiple and complex meanings of the idea of the diaspora, its condition, and its experiences as expressed in painting. “Diaspora issues and concepts are of particular importance to me as a person of colour, born in Canada with mixed Asian origins,” says curator and director Cheryl Sim. The wide spectrum of interpretations and fruitful relationships attached to diaspora experiences knows no bounds, which promotes constant dialogue with notions of kinship and identity in the current context of globalization and mass migration.

This exhibition offers a selection of works by artists who address the question of the diaspora from various points of view, approaches, and aesthetic languages. With a rich and complex history, painting is a particularly stimulating mode of expression for exploring a variety of issues comparable to the multiplicity of the diasporic experience. All the works on display aim to establish an intergenerational dialogue and to present artists whose work has contributed to pushing the limits of what painting is and can be. Given the open and discursive nature of the subject, the exhibition does not claim to be exhaustive, but rather seeks to generate ideas and encourage dialogue.

RELATIONS: Diaspora and Painting is organized by the PHI Foundation for Contemporary Art, Montreal, and presented in collaboration with the Esker Foundation.

— Curatorial text courtesy of the Esker Foundation