Nuit Blanche at Artscape Daniels Launchpad: Artist Profiles
Nuit Blanche is back on and we’re so excited! On October 1st, Artscape Daniels Launchpad will participating as a Major Downtown Institution at Nuit Blanche, and we can’t wait to have you!
We’re so pleased to be taking part in this year’s event, featuring a lineup of 13 incredible artists, who will be exploring the theme of ‘The Space Between Us.’
Read about them below, and be sure to check them out on October 1st, all night long!
Artists participating in Nuit Blanche at Artscape Daniels Launchpad
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Meet Kasra Goodarznezhad, a new media artist based in Toronto, focused on performance and installation. Kasra’s work – focused post-1979 revolution in Iran (prevalent with protest, war, natural dissasters and devastation) – features the installation of satellite dishes and a simulated rooftop with hanging clothes. The immersive experience will feature the sounds of Iranian voices and chants, while visitors experience the change of sunrise, to sunset via projected imagery. |
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Gursimran Datla Meet Gursimran Datla, a South Asian emerging filmmaker based in Toronto whose work is typically focused on the theme of displacement and connection to idea of space. ‘Soliloquy’ will be a visual project shot by Super8mm film, and showcasing a montage of an ongoing investigation into a Refugee living in a detention center. The video will intersect with the day in a life of a new immigrant, and his effort to build like a-new, while trying to connect with community. |
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Julianna Smith Meet Julianna Smith, an artist with a passion for the natural wood around them; flowers, trees, the way the light touches the tips of every little thing… Their piece of work will include a wooden sculpture, media, and sound, intended to explore intuit familiarity – what is understood vs needing explanation. Smith’s piece will explore connection, and how physics reconciles science with spirituality. |
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Rojin Shafiei Meet Rojin Shafiei, an Iranian artist living and working in Montreal/Toronto whose video work show that art is a vehicle for the translation of cultural messages and is used to present diverse feminine subjectivities. Her piece ‘I am Just Tired’ captured her post-pandemic feeling of just that, being tired. This project will feature conversations with people in their space – observing them for hours while they are unaware of the camera. One is tired of work, one is tired of thinking about inflation, one is tired of following the news about their home country… |
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Will Selviz Meet Will Selviz, an Afro-Caribbean multidisciplinary designer, who specializes in immersive media technologies including 3D animation, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and 360 video. ENTROPY IN PROTOPIA explores themes of belonging, cultural preservation and speculative futures through an afro-surrealist lens. A motion graphics anthology diving into speculative futures to bring hope and empower underrepresented creatives across the globe to tell their stories. |
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Nicole Vella Meet computer artist, Nicole Vella, whose practice considers how technology can visually express and elicit a range of human emotion through simplified movement and form. ‘Colour Field’ is a video projection of amorphous and vibrantly coloured shapes moving across a white background. Illustrating the unique identities and diversity within our communities and how we —as individuals and as groups— move through the world. Colour Field is not a video and will never loop, rather it is software as art; code which constantly generates new colours and forms. |
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Francisca Duran Meet Francisca Duran, an experimental media artist who creates films, video installation, and 2D, photo-based, mixed-media works about history, memory and violence. Francisca’s work ‘Research garden: unwanted flora’ will explore the shapes, colours and textures of phytogrammed Trefolium* leaves and stems, as well as Acer Sacchararinum** keys. This interactive installation considers the complications and contradictions of archiving, human and other-than-human entanglements, and the visual strata of the places we call home. *Clover **Silver Maple |
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Ayam Yaldo Meet Ayam Yaldo, an interdisciplinary artist based in Tiohtiá:ke/Montréal. Focusing on the body, identity and image, she explores concepts of reconstruction, transformation and ephemerality, in relation to forms of displacement. ‘To Hold’ is an extension of a larger body of work surrounding world building of lost and destroyed Mesopotamian artifacts. The video explores the interior of a vessel as a landscape, layered with repetitive figures of basket carriers and open palm hands as scared gestures, resembling prayer poses. The environment is constructed from 3D scans of ancient utilitarian water jugs that are contextualized through a multi-layered video collage. |
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Shirin Fahmi
Meet Iranian-born digital media artist Shirin Fahimi, whose practice investigates the colonial dichotomies of rationalism and superstition, as well as the ways in which women negotiate visibility in the political arena of Islamic societies through digital world-making. ‘Umm al Raml’s Sand Narratives’ is an installation that juxtaposes the spiritual journey of four Iranian women practicing mysticism in Toronto with a virtual reality landscape generated through divination that imagines the future of female prophecy. |
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Melissa Joakim Meet Melissa Joakim, a lighting and projection designer, scenographer and stage manager based in Toronto. Using light, projection, sound, space and objects Melissa creates immersive environments that translate the emotions of a story into a palpable experience. ‘PORT’ is a glowing doorway featuring LED strip lights built into a door structure, with light up fog that emanates in the threshold. The installation has a symbolic meaning: Porte in French means gate; port as a city connected to a waterway; port as a threshold between known and unknown; here and beyond; reality and wonder. |
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Rahul Anil Meet Rahul Anil, whose video piece ‘around us’ is a visual contemplation of overlapping situations in the artists’ mind. Using multiple kinetic sensors, Rahul has filmed members of his community on a green screen, creating a seamless 360 pixelated video. Each individual is participating in a different activity; listening to music, dancing, taking photos. This immersive piece plays with the idea of time and the many ways that we perceive ourselves. Be sure to check it out. #RoadtoNuit #ArtscapeDanielsLaunchpad #NuitBlanche2022 #ArtistProfile #artscape |
