AFK | Exhibitions

Notes for a Guest Book

Nour Bishouty

Curated by: Jaclyn Quaresma

Artist Talk

The artist will be in attendance at the opening reception.

Location

Ace Hotel Toronto

51 Camden St, Toronto, ON M5V 1V2

Street level entrance, elevator and ramp available. Accessible gender neutral and single occupancy washroom with automatic door.

For a map of Ace Hotel Toronto, click here

COVID-19 Policy

Images Festival is committed to providing an accessible festival and continues to work to reduce barriers to participation at our events. This year, we are implementing a COVID-19 policy to reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission for all, and to prioritize the participation of people who are disability-identified, immunocompromised, or part of an otherwise vulnerable group.

The following guidelines will be in place: Self-Assessment: We ask that staff and participants screen themselves for COVID-19 before visiting the exhibition.

The installation, Notes for a Guest Book by Nour Bishouty, is a collection of images and texts that consider the hotel as an omnipresent spectre always appearing as a witness, attesting to moments of gathering, remembering, collective action, celebration, as well as war, violence, and exile. The reflection, conversations, research, and creative process that Nour explored in the weeks leading up to, during, and after her residency with Ace Hotel and Images Festival are poetically woven through these fragments. Pulled from the Palestinian Museum Digital Archive, the collected materials act as visual records documenting moments from the history of Palestine’s colonization. These vistas articulate alternative voices of resistance.

This exhibition is presented as part of a yearlong partnership between Ace Hotel and Images Festival. Four artists have been invited to participate in quarterly, month-long residencies at the hotel followed by an exhibition of their work. The residency takes place under the theme of (g)host, extending the 2023 festival’s central inquiry and foregrounding moving images to contend with ideas at the intersection of archives, spirit, care, and hospitality.

A special thank you to Darren Rigo for the photo documentation.

Nour Bishouty

Nour Bishouty is an interdisciplinary artist working across media including video, sculpture, works on paper, digital images, and writing. Her work engages with histories and narratives of place and poses questions around dissonance, opacity, legibility, and the generative possibilities of misunderstanding. Bishouty’s work has been exhibited in Canada and internationally including at Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography, Toronto (2022); the Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto (2021); Darat Al Funun, Amman (2017); Casa Arabe, Madrid (2016); Access Gallery, Vancouver (2015); the Mosaic Rooms, London (2015); and the Beirut Art Centre, Beirut (2014). Her artist book 1—130: Selected works Ghassan Bishouty b. 1941 Safad, Palestine — d. 2004 Amman, Jordan, edited by Jacob Korczynsci, was co-published in 2020 by Art Metropole (Toronto) and Motto Books (Berlin). Upcoming exhibitions include La biennale de Québec (Feb 2024).

Presented With:

Images Festival operates on land stolen from the Anishinaabe, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, the Huron-Wendat, and the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. Tkáron:to is currently home to diverse Indigenous and Métis peoples as well as people who settle on this land. As part of Treaty 13 and the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Covenant, we acknowledge that we all eat from the same bowl and spoon, and must take only what we need, ensuring resources are available for all.

As art workers, artists, and curators, we see the process of untangling ourselves from settler complicity as internal, structural, and ongoing. It is not something to be taken lightly. The inclusion of Indigenous artists and curators into our program is just the first step of necessary and deeper change. Extending from our organizational accountability work, we strive to not only undo forms of complicity, but also actively create an environment and infrastructure that can support Indigenous peoples who work with us.

Images expresses our solidarity with Indigenous people on Turtle Island and globally. We are committed to continuing to learn, critique, and challenge the settler colonial structures we are complicit in.