Digitalia - Rah Eleh / Joshua Vettivelu

About

Employing photography, installation and sculpture, the show pairs the work of two innovative Canadian artists – Rah Eleh and Joshua Vettivelu – who through diverse media and positionalities critique the disembodied fabric of social media. SomoS is proud to present the Berlin version of this ambitious ongoing exhibition project, developed during Noor Bhangu’s Curatorial Residency at SomoS earlier in 2020.

Digitalia questions the vision of the internet as a Utopian space, taking as a starting point the term coined by the Canadian film critic Cameron Bailey, to speak on “the convergence of genitalia, marginalia, and wires.”

At this time, when social, artistic, and intellectual activities have moved online, it is imperative to unsettle the fabric of virtual participation to make sense of its participants: If you are allowed entry, what degrees of embodiment and identification have to be surfeited? If the mantra of these times is “We’re in this together, just apart,” what are the degrees of separation that predate and now survive through our current virtual communications?

About the Artists:

Rah Eleh

Rah Eleh is a video, net and performance artist. Rah’s work has been exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally at spaces including: Images Festival (Toronto), Museum London, Carleton University Art Gallery (Ottawa), Williams College Museum of Art (Williamstown, Massachusetts), Miami Art Basel, Nieuwe Vide (Haarlem, Netherlands), Pao Festival (Oslo, Norway), Kunst Am Spreeknie (Berlin, Germany), Kunsthaus Graz Museum (Graz, Austria), and Onassis Cultural Center (Athens, Greece). Rah is represented by Vtape, Canada’s leading artist-run distributor for video art.

Joshua Vettivelu

Joshua Vettivelu is a Toronto based artist working within sculpture, installation, performance, video, and drawing. Vettivelu currently sits on the Board of Directors of CARFAC National, the editorial board of C Magazine, is an instructor at OCAD University and the previous Director of Programming at Whippersnapper Gallery. Vettivelu is the recipient of the City of Toronto’s 2019 Emerging Artist Award.

About Curator Noor Bhangu:

Noor Bhangu is a curator and scholar of South Asian descent based in Toronto. Her work employs cross-cultural encounters to examine issues of the diaspora in post-colonial and settler-colonial contexts, engaging with themes surrounding diasporic belonging, archival practices, and cultural translations.

Bhangu earned her BA and MA from the University of Winnipeg, and is pursuing a PhD from Ryerson/York University, earning awards, grants, and scholarships at both universities. She has given public lectures nationally and internationally, including the Inuit Futures Summer Institute at the 58th Venice Biennale. Her writing and editorial work have appeared in many publications, both online and in print.

Duration: September 1st – 12th 2020 – from 2 – 7 pm. RSVP required.
Please schedule your visit using the form on SomoS website.