Impos(s)able Impositions, this year’s annual master's of fine arts (MFA) graduate exhibit at the Helen and Morris Belkin Art Gallery, encompasses the lives and experiences of its artists in various mediums through photography, senses, print, sculpture, film and performance art, demonstrating the complexities of contemporary art.
The exhibit invites select graduate students from the MFA program to showcase the artworks they have developed throughout their degree. This year’s exhibition features works by Solange Adum Abdala, Mahsa Farzi, Vanessa Mercedes Figueroa, Sarah Haider and Yuan Wen.
While the artist developed their work independently, Belkin curator Melanie O’Brian said that “materially, they have this kind of interactivity … they’re all dealing with memory and the body.”
Haider’s piece, entitled “Pouring from an Empty Cup” is displayed on a large white wall next to the entrance. Sixteen letters span the space, each addressed to significant people in the artist’s life. Beside each letter is a piece of canvas with a scent that ties it to the letter. The scents are samples of real parts of her life and range from perfume, melted snow and sweat to burnt orange. Through each letter and its associated scent, Haider offers the viewer a deeply personal insight into her life, laying her memories bare and allowing strangers to read personal correspondence with her family, friends and partner.
In a large room at the other end of the gallery, Wen’s intricately woven bamboo sculptures, elements of her piece entitled “Following this Wave,” hang from the ceiling. Light shines from above the sculptures, creating stunning patterns and shadows across the floor. There is something remarkable about standing under the sculptures and looking up at them. The installation dances above you as the light reflects off paper. Wen explained that the artwork speaks to her cultural identity.
“I choose material from my hometown and really closely relate to my childhood memory and [a] really different lifestyle in rural China,” said Wen. “My thing is [to]connect some memory, connect some differences between futures, between nations, or maybe between different lifestyle[s], like … capitalism here [versus] my hometown, [a] quiet peasant community.”
Wen’s decision to use bamboo as her material comes from bamboo not being limited to landscaping. In her hometown, she said, bamboo is used to “do everything, cook, make tools, make furniture.” As such, the artist draws on a long and personal history of bamboo as a versatile material when she uses it to make her sculpture. Creating this bamboo installation was a process of experimentation for Wen, because she is not a “master of the bamboo weaving.” Rather, she took some craft courses and examined patterns in bamboo woven objects from her hometown to understand the practice of weaving with the material.
Figueroa said that she uses film, sculptures and performance art as a “reflection of how racialized feminized bodies such as [her] own move through space.” She specifically focuses on the labour undertaken by feminized bodies. In the middle of a large grey room where Figueroa’s works are displayed, there is a massive enclosed cubicle. Peeking through an opening in the centre, viewers see a desktop computer showing a scene from her short film. Along the sides of the room is a printer and a large filing cabinet, furthered the corporate critique in her works. Her piece, entitled “Wow Factor,” is based on her experience as a marketing coordinator in a chain liquor store where they told her that she “was doing a great job but that [she] had no wow factor.”
Impos(s)able impositions is on display at the Belkin Gallery until June 1. If you can’t make it to this one, don’t worry! The Belkin hosts MFA graduate exhibitions every year.
A previous version of this story misstated the title of Sarah Haider's work as “Chalo k Chalen! (Let’s Go!)”, when it is in fact titled "Pouring from an Empty Cup". This article was updated on May 19, 2025 at 3:25 p.m. to reflect this change.
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