Opening
Thursday, May 22, 2025
6 to 9 pm
Artist talks in the gallery:
Andrea Carlson and Tanya Lukin Linklater
Friday, May 23, 2025, starting at 3:30 pm
Tuấn Andrew Nguyễn, Stanley Inum, Fordy Inum, and Enoch Lun with translator Kireni Imwe Jean Sparks-Ngenge
Saturday, May 24, 2025, starting at 2 pm
RSVP by clicking here.
From the director …
As Director/Curator of The Joan and Martin Goldfarb Gallery, I am lucky to be part of a dedicated team of professional curators, educators, and administrators who are experts in the field of contemporary and modern art, working to expand and question how art is defined, who has access to it, and who controls its history and future. Felicia Mings curated our Winter 2025 exhibitions, presenting exhibitions by Charles Campbell and Maryam Taghavi and showcasing a recent commission by Dele Adeyemo. Both Campbell and Taghavi’s work address rich cultural histories, using light, shadow, and movement to summon ancestorial heritage through bodily experiences. Mings developed a robust program of talks, readings, gatherings, and performances that invited scholars, poets, and dancers to interrupt the exhibitions, expanding how our audiences engaged these layered works. With the physical placement of Adeyemo’s born-digital artwork in our lobby, I have come to understand From Longhouse to Highrise as a complex and multi-vocal land acknowledgement, addressing the colonial history of how it is we occupy this site.
A considered part of our programming addresses our geographic place as situated in multiple communities defined by our settler history and the need for Indigenous placemaking, our geographic location in the neighbourhood of Jane Finch, our position within the University, and our place in Toronto. This stream establishes the importance of building partnerships and collaborations with other arts-related and community-based organizations. For example, our Education and Community Engagement Coordinator, Allyson Adley, has developed Art on My Mind, a songwriting, vocal, and performance workshop series which over the last six years has been hosted in community spaces across Jane Finch. This year, we are once again collaborating with Nathan Baya from Jane Street Speaks and partnering with Black Creek Community Farms to bring the latest installment of this vital program. This collaborative ethos is woven into the pages of our upcoming publication, Tim Whiten: Elemental, a four-gallery co-publishing effort lead by our Assistant Curator, Publishing, Michael Maranda. The book began in intertwined solo exhibitions of Whiten’s work, presented consecutively at McMaster Museum of Art, the Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Art Gallery of Peterborough, and, lastly, in our old gallery.
Land, the effects of and resistance to colonization, and the spirit of objects connect our upcoming exhibitions: Tuấn Andrew Nguyễn’s When Water Embraces Empty Space, which I have the privilege to curate, and Andrea Carlson’s A Painting is a Coin, curated by our Assistant Curator, Exhibitions, Clara Halpern, who has brought together a complex exhibition spanning painting, sculpture, drawing, video, and print. The latter exhibition showcases Carlson’s cutting refusal of settler narratives, asserting Indigenous presence, and building matrices of meaning that are personal, politically charged, and cosmologically expansive. The parallel programs for our Spring/Summer season include a public conversation between Carlson and artist Tanya Lukin Linklater exploring their artistic dialogue and shared interest in language.
Analogous to Carlson’s exhibition, Nguyễn’s begins with one object and the story of a late nineteenth-century boat, the Luf canoe, expropriated from the Island of Luf in Papua New Guinea by a German trader. This material yet ethereal exhibition reveals the conflicting history of the canoe’s journey through the voices of three descendants of the original Craftspeople of the boat who Nguyễn brought to Berlin to encounter the canoe in person. We have the honor to bring these descendants, Stanley Inum, Fordy Stanley, and Enoch Lun, to Toronto with Kireni Imwe Jean Sparks-Ngenge, the singing voice featured in the exhibition’s eponymous work, for a public conversation with Nguyễn.
Opening
Thursday, May 22, 2025
6 to 9 pm
Artist talks in the gallery:
Andrea Carlson and Tanya Lukin Linklater
Friday, May 23, 2025, starting at 3:30 pm
Tuấn Andrew Nguyễn, Stanley Inum, Fordy Inum, and Enoch Lun with translator Kireni Imwe Jean Sparks-Ngenge
Saturday, May 24, 2025, starting at 2 pm
RSVP by clicking here.
Recently, we have regrettably had to say goodbye to Lillian O’Brien Davis who held the contract position of Curator of Collections and Contemporary Art Engagement for the last 18 months. During her tenure, she accomplished so much, curating exhibitions and leading the transfer of York University’s Collection into our new Visible Vault with a level of care, scholarship, and planning for the future, leaving the artworks in good care for those of us who will continue to tend the collection. She will continue working with us on two exhibitions, including a group show related to our collection and artist Michael Belmore’s influences and a solo exhibition with Torkwase Dyson. O’Brien Davis also activated our Acquisitions Committee, which is evident in recent additions to the collection, with two exciting highlights including paintings by Ethiopian American artist Tariku Shiferaw and Ghanaian artist Emmanuel Taku, both generously donated by David and Julie Moos.
Our newly expanded facilities are muscles which we are still learning to flex. Our new galleries afford us the ability to address the changing and challenging needs of contemporary artists, offering ample and distinct exhibitions in scale, form, and openness, but it is also the professionalism and skilled experience of our lead preparator, Uroš Jelić, that enables the curatorial and artist’s visions, adding polish to our exhibitions and hiding our cords and cracks. Much of our energy is focused on creating a professional, convivial, and accessible place for artists to present their work and for audiences to engage with art in an open and welcome environment. This work is embodied by Maria Won, our Gallery Administration Assistant, who supports all of our programs, working to extend hospitality to both the artists we work with and the audiences who engage our programs. Won, in concert with our Gallery Attendant Ehiko Odeh and our 2024–25 work study students Siah McTavish and Jorja Maretzki, has worked to create a welcoming space for all who walk through our doors.
We invite you to visit and witness the energy, the care, and the commitment that shape us.
Jenifer Papararo
Director/Curator
Thanks to those that brought these exhibitions to fruition:
Gallery Staff: Allyson Adley (education and community engagement coordinator), Clara Halpern (assistant curator, exhibitions), Michael Maranda (assistant curator, publishing), Felicia Mings (curator), Ehiko Odeh (gallery attendant), Jenifer Papararo (director/curator), Maria Won (gallery administration assistant)
Installation team for exhibitions: Uroš Jelić (lead), Phu Bui, Matthew Koudys, Jonah Kamphorst, James King, Nadine Maher, Jordan May, and Manny Trinh.
Graphic design and visual identity: Mark Bennett
See also:
