Ghost Stories

3 October, 2009. 7pm-7am, 401 Richmond St. W., fourth floor

Through a series of resonant performances Ghost Stories explore the relationship of the body to questions of cultural memory and consciousness. Revealing how personal, historical and collective memories of colonization and marginalization are latent within the postures and inflexions of the body, Ghost Stories unpacks the multiple valences of diasporic identities. Histories of oppression, issues of abjection, self-alienation, apparitions of social and cultural pasts are some of the themes explored. The experience of identity manifests itself to be a crisis of unconsciousness – partially embodied knowledge, of forgotten truths and body memory. In Ghost Stories artists - Simla Civelek, Leila Gajusingh, Ashok Mathur and Nilan Perera, Nahed Mansour, Meena Murugesan and Mehr Javed - transform the everyday functional spaces at the 401 Richmond Street West building with transient and compelling performances that evoke a sense of the uncanny.

Highlights of Ghost Stories include Air Hunger (2008) by Mehr Javed, an emerging Pakistani artist who examines taboos and notions of the grotesque body. Toronto-based Leila Gajusingh tests the limits of her endurance as she writes playful messages with her eyelashes in Batted Annotations. In an experimental sound and spoken word piece, Ashok Mathur and Nilan Perera create a haunting atmosphere brimming with memories and longing.

Haema Sivanesan, Executive Director of SAVAC states: “There are very few South Asian artists working in performance art practice. We are delighted to have the opportunity to present a strong line-up of artists whose performances reflect on critical questions of the migrant body and its taboos.”