#5 — smART Magazine’s Guide to Immersive Disney Animation
Discover more from The smARTcircle - Toronto - Visual Arts
#5 — smART Magazine’s Guide to Immersive Disney Animation
PLUS: Delali Cofie & our latest smARTpicks!
Welcome back to The smARTCircle, what a week it’s been! First of all, we're so excited to announce our first book! As usual, you’ll also find our best recs in visual arts happening around you, and with the CONTACT and Images festivals in full swing, there are so many things to choose from. To give you a taste, we're including a conversation we had in Issue 11 with Delali Cofie, a CONTACT participant from 2022. And we’re already underway with our next issue — so if you feel like you have a story to contribute to Issue 12, find out how you can submit here.
Guide to Immersive Disney Animation
Created in collaboration with Walt Disney Animation Studios, smART Magazine’s first book - Guide to Immersive Disney Animation - is a celebration of Lighthouse Immersive’s highly anticipated Disney Animation Immersive Experience. This comprehensive guide brings you a panoramic perspective on the unique exhibit experience, including exclusive insights into the concept and production, interviews with Disney and Lighthouse Immersive creatives, and a specially commissioned 10-part history of Disney. Available in print at all Disney Animation Immersive Experience exhibit locations (digital format only available online).
FROM ISSUE 11: Delali Cofie
by AMBER SOLBERG
For Issue 11, we had the privilege to speak with Toronto-based Ghanaian-Nigerian photographer, Delali Cofie. We spoke to Cofie about the influence of West African Studio photography, strategies for COVID-era portraiture, and being featured by the CONTACT Photography Festival in the 2022 exhibition, A Place of Ours:
sM | With collections like A Place of Ours, your work tends to articulate an African aesthetic that returns the Western gaze and centre a cinematic beauty in these settings. As a diasporic artist, how do you hope to engage the global lens through which African cultures – and Ghana in particular – is perceived?
DC ── I think a beautiful and powerful thing about media today is that, realistically, anyone can have a say or can draw attention or grab attention. Anyone can promote how they see things, who they are, their opinions—and I think that translates into how ubiquitous photography is today. We can all build our own agency of how we see our own places or how we capture our own places. In that sense, I consider myself just one of many people coming out of Ghana who have taken up the mantle through their love of photography, of saying, “This is how I see my place.”
That’s what A Place of Ours is: being unique to my view and my eyes and my life and my artistic sensibilities as someone who grew up in Ghana and someone who grew to love photography. What I hope to do is add variety into how Africa is perceived around the world. ── CONTINUE READING IN ISSUE 11.
TOP EXHIBITS AND EVENTS HAPPENING NEAR YOU:
As part of the Scotiabank Contact Photography Festival, Wolfgang Tillmans To look without fear at the Art Gallery of Ontario is the German photographer's first survey in a Canadian Museum. With 400+ artworks from the early 90s to now, Tillman's boundary pushing installation practice presents an expanded field of photography. April 7–October 1
Also part of CONTACT Photography Festival, Maïmouna Guerresi is exhibiting two photography shows at the Aga Khan. Based on work created during a residency at Musée d’Art Contemporain Africain Al Maaden in Marrakesh, Morocco in 2020, the Italian-Senegalese multi-media artist is bringing Sebaätou Rijal & Villes Nouvelles and Ancient Shadows: a portrait series informed by local Sufi traditions and a haunting survey of French colonial architecture, respectively. April 29–September 4
CONTACT isn't the only festival in town. The Images Festival also has so much exciting programming happening this month. Check out naakita feldman-kiss's The Density of Dust, curated by Lisa Steele, at the Bachir/Yerex Presentation Space on 401 Richmond's 4th floor. Co-presented by Vtape, this exhibition uses the layers of dust to explore the history and hauntology of the building and its machinery through video, text, and close listening. April 13–May 6
Another Images Festival exhibition you should check out is bringing to light what came from inside, with Becca Redden, Sheri Osden Nault, and Taina Da Silva, and curation by Samay Arcentales. Hosted by Charles Street Video, poetic video work by the artists explore Indigenous temporalities through lo-fi sci-fi tropes. Curious? Find out more at the panel discussion, April 19. April 13–22
At Doris McCarthy Gallery, The UofT Scarborough Studio Art Graduate Exhibition, Prologue, will feature 40 works by 29 artists under the mentorship of Marla Hlady and Will Kwan. If you have the chance, check out the reception and artist talks Friday, April 14 from 5–8 pm. April 15–20
And over in Parkdale, there's another culminating exhibition of graduating artists working with digital and traditional media from Seneca College's Illustration program. Showcasing the next generation of illustrators, The Best Ever Illustration Grad Show will have its reception April 20 from 7–9 pm at Gallery 1313. April 18–23
Ontario Society of Artists' 149th Open Juried Exhibition, Colour Splash! has more than 30 participating artists exhibiting work at John B. Aird Gallery. The OSA is Canada's longest continuing art society, founded in 1872. The opening reception will be this Saturday, April 15, 2–5 pm and Artist Talks will be held the 22nd from 3–4 pm. Juror, Josh Heuman, will also host a Wine Tasting on April 29, 3:30–5pm. April 6–May 4
With a title nodding to Jorge Luis Borges, Other Tigers brings together 25 Canadian Artists working in multiple media — including photography, print, craft-based media, and sculpture. This is the inaugural show of The Lost and Found, a project space on Queen Street East and Parliament. Reception is this Saturday from 7–11pm. April 15–May 7
SPONSORED | Samara Joy: Linger Awhile
On her Verve Records debut, Samara Joy sings beloved songs with a modern twist – including “Someone to Watch Over Me”, “‘Round Midnight”, and more.
