for there are many stories here brings together works that address multiple iterations of ‘here,’ from the specific location of the exhibition to the expanded notions of place and presence. This geographic exploration asks: have the stories that are located in this place carried over time?

The exhibition, curated by Master of Visual Studies thesis student Jaclyn Quaresma, engages in a conversation that spans some 40,800 years between contemporary, historic, and prehistoric artists and writers. The agential acts performed by Andrea Chung, Doris McCarthy, Ana Mendieta, Shelley Niro, Elizabeth Simcoe, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson and Alize Zorlutuna are central to the conversation. The stories take the form of archive ephemera, books and diaries, soundscape and video, and pursue self-determination as a form of resistance and remembrance.

Images of the cave and the bluffs bracket the exhibition. They offer two distinct ways of thinking with the land and through the stories it holds. The cave, an early place of ritual, provides a model of care, preservation and protection. It nods to emergence, the origin of human consciousness, knowledge and truth as well as the safekeeping of tradition, whereas the bluffs present something altogether different. Bluffs, constant in their erosion, are continually releasing the past. As the grains and detritus of the rock wall leave its surface, they recalibrate amongst the waves, coming together to make a new landmass. This formation can take tens and hundreds of years but eventually the bits of old come together to make something new. Within this framework, for there are many stories here considers small acts of resistance and the stories that carry through them.

This exhibition is produced as part of the requirements for the MVS degree in Curatorial Studies at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design, University of Toronto.

Works by Andrea Chung, Shelley Niro, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson and Alize Zorlutuna

Additional materials by and about Doris McCarthy, Ana Mendieta, Nicholas Poussin, Elizabeth Simcoe and a reproduction of the prehistoric La Cueva de El Castillo

Curated by Jaclyn Quaresma

The exhibition will run until May 20, 2017. For more information, and gallery hours, visit the Doris McCarthy Gallery website.