Screening of video film and meeting with artist, 8.01, 6 p.m.

Kinga Araya was born in Poland, studied at the Catholic University of Lublin (KUL), the University of Ottawa, York University, Texas Tech University in Lubbock (USA), and currently, at the Concordia University in Montreal (PhD-Special Individualised Doctoral Program).

She exhibited in many galleries abroad and her videotapes were shown at Canadian, Australian, Italian, Yugoslavian and Polish (WRO'99) film and video festivals.

In her art works Kinga Araya investigates the phenomenon of movement, presented as a rich metaphor, which forms our identity. In the performance work, Grounded, Araya meditates upon the notion of travel by foot understood as liberating, and at the same time, constraining movement. Her sculptural objects, performances and videos (especially Tahoka) are based on an artistic conviction that stability and security is always coupled with that which impedes the progressive movement forward.

still from video "ABC"

Whenever I think about my personal and artistic raison d'être I posit rhetorical question such as: Who am I? and Why am I where I am? While constantly moving in and out of different politico-cultural and geographical frames, I examine and meditate upon my itinerant "self", my becoming identity...

The phenomenon of living in-between diverse cultures, countries and languages became a condition sine qua non of my artistic practice. I often question my belonging to one group or the other I encounter during my journeys. How much of my „self" is still „Polish", how much of it was „Italianised" and how much has already become "Canadian"? I believe that the driving force behind my art works lies in an impossible desire to be in a total control of who I am and who I would like to become...

The art making process constantly opens up new areas of indeterminacy that speaks not only about aesthetics and beauty, but also about power relations. In particular, during the two years of graduate studies at York I have been investigating the phenomenon of speech and the politics of walking. My fascination with these two human tropes helps my creative desire to go beyond while being still here, in the middle of a hybrid, liminal space of in-between.

Further, being constantly challenged by dwelling in the ambivalent space of political non belonging I am forced to create new visual translations of this unpresentable status quo in video, sculpture performance and mixed media installations.

Along with one of the contemporary intellectual nomads, Horni Bhabha, I would conclude that: In that walk that hither and thither, that turns salt into symbol of freedom, or bronze into human image, I felt need to translate, to create something between art and history and with the desire to go beyond.

Kinga Araya