Installation view of Tim Whiten: Elemental Fire at the Art Gallery of York University, 2023. Photograph Toni Hafkensheid.

Zoom link for this evening’s meet-up is https://yorku.zoom.us/j/91590084635?pwd=N1BxQnl2UU9jSnZpai9VT0tuTHA2Zz09

The Elemental Reading Group led by Farhia Tato is part of our parallel program in-conjunction with our current exhibition, Tim Whiten: Elemental Fire guest curated by Liz Ikiriko. Across this two part reading group, Tato will guide participants through an immersive exploration of Whiten’s cultural objects, the themes referenced in his work, and the concepts drawn out by the exhibition. Tato has organized the reading group to draw inspiration from poetry and meditative soundscapes as guiding forces. Through this journey, Tato invites participants to examine the intricate connections and linkages between energy, chance, play, desire, labor, trust, and risk, intertwining them like alchemy transmuting classical elements. This exploration seeks to enrich understandings of the multifaceted nature of being encapsulated by Whiten’s use of materials, processes of making, and object formations.

Please join us and Tato online on Tuesday, October 24 from 7 to 8 pm EDT and/or Tuesday, November 28 from 7 to 8 pm EST in a conversation using prose and poetry. No previous reading is required and you are welcome to one or both sessions. Discussion will be initiated with a five minute meditation led by work from multidisciplinary artist LaMont Hamilton, who deals with the spiritual, ecological, and subconscious through sound, installation, performance, poetry, and lens-based media. Following, participants will be invited to read poems or small texts aloud.

Please register here: https://AGYU.as.me

Farhia Tato is a Somali-Oromo multidisciplinary artist based in Toronto and Nairobi. Her current projects focus on the parallels between discourses of race and technology. She is interested in the processes that undergird black conception/perception, representation, and sociality. Through storytelling, Tato desires to challenge preconceived notions about our identities and histories. Farhia takes great pleasure in constructing poetic and imaginative narratives rooted in folklore, fairy tales, and mythologies.