S3 Ep2: Curating Contemporary Art with Sandy Saad-Smith

This episode's guest is Sandy Saad-Smith, curator of the Doris McCarthy Gallery, a professional public art gallery within the University of Toronto Scarborough.

In conversation with CVC's Anissa Talahite-Moodley, Sandy talks us through the process of curating it’s because of the shimmer, the verge, and the yet, a solo exhibition of works by the artist Erika DeFreitas, whose practice reflects on loss, post-memory, legacy, and objecthood. DeFreitas' artwork addresses historical and archival absences, offering a rich, poetic reimagining of an alternate text that attests to the complex lives of women, including Maud Sulter, Jeanne Duval, Gertrude Stein, and Agnes Martin.

Sandy also tells us about a new exhibition in the gallery by the Waard Ward collective in collaboration with Anne Campbell, Nicolas Fleming, Reza Nik, Darren Rigo & Alize Zorlutuna. Featuring photography, ceramics, florals, and a site-specific garden installation, A rose gives its fragrance even to the hand that crushes it evokes the memory of the Nanaa family’s garden, courtyard, and home, lost in the Syrian war. The exhibition explores the colonial history of flowers, the legacy of war on land, the imagined landscape, the displacement of people, and the longing for home.

Find out more about the gallery and the exhibitions Sandy has worked on:

Doris McCarthy Gallery

A rose gives its fragrance even to the hand that crushes it 

it’s because of the shimmer, the verge, and the yet

The Yet

See Sandy's website here

CVC website
Email: centreforvisualcultures@rhul.ac.uk
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Instagram: @rhul_cvc