An End: A Beginning
Thank you for joining us along the way and participating in our talk on Apr. 26th to mark the end of Chapter I. Follow our Tumblr (Dawat Yan Project) or Instagram (@dawatyanproject) to stay updated, as the Dawat Yan Banquet will keep growing.
We've captured the live evolution of Chapter 1 in the time-lapse below.
Dawat Yan Banquet is supported by AGO X RBC Artist-In-Residence Program 2022
Hosted by Dawat Yan Project
As a Pakistani-Canadian, Mariam Magsi was inspired to reconnect with her South Asian heritage and culture after her mother’s demise in 2019. Having lost access to ancestral languages, customs and intergenerational wisdom, the Dawat Yan Project became a creative way to reignite connection with community and culture. Using a multidisciplinary approach, Magsi unpacks themes related to constructions of identity, intergenerational trauma, gender, sexuality and migration, by engaging with lens-based media, performance art, poetry and installation.
IG: @mariam_magsi | mariammagsi.com
Based in Tkaronto/Toronto, Eric Chengyang’s practice integrates storytelling with visual arts, by using archives, museum collections and hybrid digital media. Coming from a multilingual Chinese-Canadian background, their works explore the themes of symbiotic duality and paradox, with a focus on the intersections and proximity between the East and the West, while challenging the conventional notion of the East-West dichotomy. The Dawat Yan Project is a collaborative continuation of these themes.
Guest Artists
Amin Alsaden is a curator, educator, and scholar of art and architecture, whose work focuses on transnational solidarities and exchanges across cultural boundaries. With a commitment to advancing social justice through the arts, Alsaden’s curatorial practice contributes to the dissemination of more diverse, inclusive, and global narratives, by decentering and expanding existing canons, and challenging hegemonic knowledge and power structures.
In the Dawat Yan Banquet, Amin is exploring the banquet in relation to food, architecture and the concept of home. (Portrait by Gary Franks)
Niloufar Salimi (b. Shiraz, Iran & based in Toronto) uses drawing and minimal mixed media to form narratives that live in the interstices of certainty and ambiguity. Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, Salimi’s daily drawing practice has concentrated on the old, wild apple trees outside her apartment window. “One window for seeing/ One window for hearing/ One window for reaching into the heart of the earth” (Forough Farrokhzad).
Through her unique artistic touch, Nilou is sharing her story of "fruits and gathering" in the Dawat Yan Banquet.
Karina Iskandarsjah is an Indonesian-born artist and curator based in Tkaronto, interested in topics around cultural hybridity, geopolitics, technology, and ecologies. Responding to the topic of “florals and banquet”, Birdfeed (Part 1): Ficus is the start of an exploration of plant genuses as a way to form connections across different cultures and histories. With immigrant narratives as the central focus, this video installation weaves together plant research, poetry, theory, and the artist’s personal journal entries.
IG: @kplop
Abdullah Qureshi is a multidisciplinary artist, curator, and educator. Rooted in traditions of abstraction, he incorporates gestural, poetic, and hybrid methodologies to address autobiography, trauma, and sexuality through painting, filmmaking, and immersive events. His ongoing doctoral project, Mythological Migrations: Imagining Queer Muslim Utopias, examines formations of queer identity and resistance in Muslim migratory contexts. Qureshi is currently a Doctoral Candidate at Aalto University, Espoo, and Faculty at OCAD University, Toronto.
In the Dawat Yan Banquet, Abdullah is exploring the intersections of queerness, South Asian visual and cultural histories, and hosting. (Portrait by Hammas Wali)
IG: @maq39 | abdullahqureshi.org
We'd like to thank artist, Ange Loft, for joining our April dialogue, sharing her knowledge and helping us understand the Dawat Yan Banquet in the context of Tsi Tkarón:to/Tkaronto/Toronto.
Ange Loft is an interdisciplinary performing artist and initiator from Kahnawà:ke Kanien'kehá:ka Territory, working in Tsi Tkarón:to. She is an ardent collaborator, consultant, and facilitator working in arts based research, wearable sculpture, theatrical co-creation and Haudenosaunee history.
A special thank you to Danah Abusido, Paola Poletto, and AGO mentors for feedbacks and supports.
Website developed by Eric Chengyang (Dawat Yan Project). Thanks to Susan Qu for guidance and tips.