Archive
M:ST 3
Mara Verna
WHITES GETTING ON and WHITES GOING IN
Dates: Performance 12 noon to 4 pm, October 9. Exhibition: October 8 through to 31, Truck Gallery
Presented by: TRUCK Gallery
Nature of Event: performance, exhibition
Through the creation of staged personas and situations, Verna’s performances investigate representations of difference and the impact of the “forces which aim to regulate all that is alien, unknown, or misunderstood.” Her performance personas enter into public spaces and use “visual, aural, and social gestures to act upon or even parody the personal and social forces of power” which exist in these spaces. Verna will present two works that “illustrate an often-precarious relationship to Whiteness as a critical point of engagement,” where the desire for that which we are not, becomes more alive when juxtaposed with what we are.
“A multi-layered dystopic narrative of a foreign woman struggling to make sense of her own status in face of the Other,” Whites Going In was shot on location in Mexico City, Kahnawake, Amsterdam, and Banff. Mimicking the essay-film, Whites Going In “challenges whether the concept of Otherness may be reconceived as Whiteness, so as to problematize its status as an unchallenged construct.”
Whites Getting On will take place over the course of several hours, in various locations within downtown Calgary. Born of an increasing fascination with what it means to covet, this performance operates within the illusion of make-believe, constructing a narrative that reinvests in the suspension of disbelief.
Mara Verna’s work has been shown extensively in Canada and internationally. Traveling broadly to produce public art and live art documents, her recent solo exhibitions include Same Same at Galerija Miroslav Kraljevic in Zagreb, Croatia, Rien n’a ete perdu at La Centrale Gallery in Montreal and La Vitrine Gallery in Paris, and Sorry to Disturb at The Bag Factory in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Mountain Standard Time Performative Art Festival Society
P.O. Box 22056 Bankers Hall R.P.O, Calgary, AB CA T2P 5G7
PH. 403.837.6678 email: info@mstfestival.org