There Are Fragments

In this workshop, Erika DeFreitas will share her process of working with found images, sharing space with their subjects, and attempting to unearth narratives through research, writing, and imaginings. How might the artist’s archive—the accumulation of images and items they gather as inspiration for art, life, or both—reveal stories that have yet to be centred? What lies beneath the surface? How do we unfold, uncover, and complicate institutional archives “once immobilized for preservation”? How can we forge artistic archival practices?

We graciously request that participants prepare by:

• Reading ‘The Camera Made Me Do It’: Nicole Jolicoeur, Female Identity and Troubling Archives by Patricia Levin and Jeanne Perrault (from which the citation above is drawn).
• Bringing one or more images that stir their curiosity and/or have contributed to their practice, research, thinking. Hard copies are recommended, but accessing on a device is also welcome.
• Bringing a device with which research can be conducted if needed and/or any existing research or work related to the images (e.g., notes, journal entries, articles, sketches, etc.).

We will spend time with these images individually and as a group, engaging in different frameworks for writing with, to, about, and through them. If comfortable, participants will be encouraged to share.

This program is last of three in a series of artist-led workshops informed by C Magazine’s Experiments in Criticism Facilitator’s Guide, which was developed in 2019 in consultation with experts in critical art pedagogy. These workshops pose critical questions for contemplation and discussion and propose approaches to alternative archival practices that are rooted in community rather than established by an institution.

This program is co-created and co-presented with C Magazine. Please contact info@cmagazine.com with any accessibility requests.

If registration for the program is at capacity, please email programmingandlearning@torontobiennial.org to be added to the waitlist.

Image Credit: Erika DeFreitas, arriver avant moi, devant moi (No. 2), 2019-2020