CURATOR'S TEXT

Eve Tagny and My-Van Dam both explore a variety of artistic media, from photography to installation, performance and video. Tagny pays particular attention to location, creating delineated perimeters for each work or installation, conceived in situ, making them unique and specific to their place of production. Dam, on the other hand, comes from a sculptural background and explores healing processes, memory and intergenerational trauma. Although the body has always been central to her practice, her new body of work focuses on the healing potential of gesture.  

Eve Tagny highlights the physical and unconscious boundaries between body and space. Working with natural as well as public and private spaces, she invites many racialized performers to navigate these places through gestures. Often present in her works, she occupies these places with the performers, demonstrating support and awareness of the other. While her body and those of the performers seem central to the face-to-face works, the audience also plays a crucial role in understanding the bounded spaces and the norms associated with them. For this edition, an image from the work Assemblies has been chosen. This 12-hour performance, presented in Toronto near City Hall, features Tagny and seven other performers sharing an amphitheater-like space. Each performer circulates, carrying bags of soil and supporting the work of the others.  

My-Van Dam takes an intimate look at the healing potential of gestures. Inspired by Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen's Body-Mind Centering theory, she reflects on the power of somatic practices. The chosen work, Coregulation (1), features two performers, both somatic practitioners, exploring the power of body and gesture in healing processes. Without falling into an explicitly political or abrupt representation of the body, Dam creates quasi-ritual healing spaces of recollection, shared collectively and individually by the practitioners. These moments are always experienced by racialized women (PANDC / BIPOC). While themes of healing, memory and intergenerational trauma have always been present in her installations, this new body of work allows her to combine her practice of dance and body memory.  

Through their distinct yet complementary approaches, Eve Tagny and My-Van Dam redefine the boundaries between body, space and memory. Tagny, by exploring the interactions between bodies and places, and Dam, by examining the healing potential of gestures, offer unique perspectives on human relationships and shared experiences. Their work, while deeply personal, touches on universal issues of resilience, mutual support and transformation. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

AL-ADEEB, D. (2016). Trauma, Collective Memory, Creative and Performative Embodied Practices as Sites of Resistance. Journal of Middle East Women's Studies, 12(2), 268-274. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26571770 

Carlson, M. (2005). [Review of The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas, by D. Taylor]. TDR (1988-), 49(3), 191-192. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4488666 

Poblete, J. (2005). [Review of The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memoryin the Americas, by D. Taylor]. The Americas, 61(3), 521-522.http://www.jstor.org/stable/4490941