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{"id":268108,"date":"2025-04-15T08:38:44","date_gmt":"2025-04-15T13:38:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/compte-rendu\/nabil-azab-shannon-garden-smith-presence-in-a-past-or-an-undetermined-future\/"},"modified":"2025-04-15T09:20:24","modified_gmt":"2025-04-15T14:20:24","slug":"nabil-azab-shannon-garden-smith-presence-in-a-past-or-an-undetermined-future","status":"publish","type":"compte-rendu","link":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/reviews\/nabil-azab-shannon-garden-smith-presence-in-a-past-or-an-undetermined-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Nabil Azab & Shannon Garden-Smith
Presence in a past or an undetermined future.<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Dust covers the exhibition, in a good way. Microscopic particles float in the light as the sun shines through the gallery\u2019s floor-to-ceiling window. A fine powder drifts about and settles on the sculptural forms that are Shannon Garden-Smith\u2019s Blinds II<\/em> (2023). Nearby, Nabil Azab\u2019s dust-containing abstract photographs radiate in sooty light and shadow. Presence in a past or an undetermined future.<\/em> occupies the Special Projects Gallery (next to the main space) at Toronto\u2019s Onsite Gallery. In the exhibition text, the curator, Avalon Mott, writes that the artworks endeavour to \u201chold a moment of presence by calling on what came before it and giving space to think of what will come after.\u201d Mott goes on to note that they draw observers into an act of prolonged looking and toward a space of contemplation. The fuzzy film that (physically and conceptually) coats the exhibition perhaps best summons the presence that Mott seeks to conjure. The dust was there before, it is there now, and it will be there after.<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Dust can result from destruction, fomenting histories of conflict and violence. Azab\u2019s Untitled<\/em> series (2023) engages with a photograph of destruction from the Archive of Modern Conflict. The source image portrays the demolition of a statue of a French developer (perhaps Ferdinand de Lesseps, the engineer) of the Suez Canal. The exhibition text informs us that Azab\u2019s great-grandfather migrated from Palestine to Egypt to work on construction of the canal; shortly after he arrived, the Egyptian government nationalized the waterway, backed by the military; this ignited an invasion of Egypt by Britain, France, and Israel. Instead of the statue, Azab zeros in on the plumes of dusty smoke and debris resulting from its toppling. Across his manipulated and collaged images, he draws drifting, gestural marks. The compositions are greyscale and grainy. Opposite this series, Azab\u2019s vinyl-printed photographic image January 1, 2021<\/em> (2024) spans the entire wall. The artwork references a photograph that he stumbled upon by chance (in the snow) on New Year\u2019s Day 2021. The abstracted reworking of the cast-off image (traced to North Africa, further highlighting Azab\u2019s ancestry) calls attention to scratches and light marks. The photograph pulses with light and shadow. Warm blacks set off saturated hues of fiery orange, red, and yellow. The grainy surface evokes a dust-ridden negative. With these images, Azab pays tribute to and interprets significant moments in his family\u2019s history through artistic alterations in the present.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\"Nabil-Azab-&-Shannon-Garden-Smith\"
Nabil Azab<\/strong>
Untitled<\/em> series, 2023, installation views, Onsite Gallery, Toronto, 2025.
Photos: Polina Teif<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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\"Nabil-Azab-&-Shannon-Garden-Smith\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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\"Nabil-Azab-&-Shannon-Garden-Smith\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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\"Nabil-Azab-&-Shannon-Garden-Smith\"
Nabil Azab & Shannon Garden-Smith<\/strong>
Presence in a past or an undetermined future.<\/em>, exhibition view, Onsite Gallery, Toronto, 2025.
Photo: Polina Teif<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Dust is an unwanted material in a domestic space; historical expectations call for its removal. Garden-Smith\u2019s softly glowing Blinds II<\/em> directly references such notions of domesticity through the material that she constructs them from: gelatin, the translucent, colourless, flavourless food ingredient. Her duo of curling objects hang from beams on dyed nylon strings in the middle of the space. The rich colours of her marbled patterns decorate the thin horizontal slats. Scattered across and embedded in the patterns, various pieces of collected ornate jewellery adorn the gelatin. Each item holds the history of its past wearer. The works in Blinds II<\/em> are beautiful as objects, but they are brittle, shifting with age, resembling rib cages as much as window coverings. Perhaps too fragile for cleaning: a faint covering of powdery grey particles gathers on the wilting slats. In her exhibition text, Mott writes that, as an art material, gelatin can \u201chold the memory of its making and a sense of place.\u201d Like gelatin and the pieces of jewellery, the dusty coating on the free-hanging sculptures holds memory. The substance encompasses many different things; a mixture of materials blends into a nondescript fuzz. The powdery residue resting on Blinds II<\/em> recalls the ageing objects making, while pushing back against, a history of domestic expectations of reproductive labour. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\"Nabil-Azab-&-Shannon-Garden-Smith\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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\"Nabil-Azab-&-Shannon-Garden-Smith\"
Shannon Garden-Smith<\/strong>
Blinds II<\/em>, 2023, installation views, Onsite Gallery, Toronto, 2025.
Photos: Polina Teif<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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What happens when two outwardly disparate artworks (such as Azab\u2019s and Garden-Smith\u2019s) occupy the same space, and how exactly does dust pertain? In the first few pages of the curator and writer Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung\u2019s reimagining of curatorial practice, he posits curation\u2019s potential to become \u201ca close sibling to poetry.\u201d1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 1 <\/a> - Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, Pidginization as Curatorial Method: Messing with Languages and Praxes of Curating<\/em> (London: Sternberg Press, 2023), 6.<\/span> It seems that one way to find this poetry might be by placing things in dialogue with each other and observing what happens in the space between them. By experimenting with pairing two artists who make affecting works, Mott does just that. In her relational approach to displaying art, she stacks ideas atop each other, adding resonant new layers beyond what existed in them on their own. If we look closely, the exhibition shoulders dust, yes, but the motes of grey matter instigate a mass of musings in various forms, connotations, and implications: destruction, labour, memory, neglect, and more. Azab\u2019s and Garden-Smith\u2019s artworks poetically blend; through cohabitation, their ideas grow richer. Evocative dust arises from the friction between them. Much like how it involves a mixture of materials, the exhibition becomes a unique blend of bits from the people and things within and around it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Based in Toronto, Alexander McMillan is a writer currently pursuing an MFA in criticism and curatorial practice at OCAD University. He has written for C<\/em>, Cornelia<\/em>, Dazed<\/em>, Esse arts + opinions<\/em>, and PIN\u2013UP<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n
Alexander McMillan, Nabil Azab, Shannon Garden-Smith<\/div>\n
Alexander McMillan, Nabil Azab, Shannon Garden-Smith<\/div>
Alexander McMillan, Nabil Azab, Shannon Garden-Smith<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Onsite Gallery,<\/strong> Toronto
January 22\u2013May 17, 2025<\/br><\/br>","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":268100,"template":"","categories":[884,892],"numeros":[],"disciplines":[],"statuts":[],"checklist":[],"auteurs":[7396],"artistes":[7397,7398],"thematiques":[],"type_compte-rendu":[],"class_list":["post-268108","compte-rendu","type-compte-rendu","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","category-webzine","auteurs-alexander-mcmillan-en","artistes-nabil-azab-en","artistes-shannon-garden-smith-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/compte-rendu\/268108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/compte-rendu"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/compte-rendu"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/268100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268108"},{"taxonomy":"numeros","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/numeros?post=268108"},{"taxonomy":"disciplines","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/disciplines?post=268108"},{"taxonomy":"statuts","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/statuts?post=268108"},{"taxonomy":"checklist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/checklist?post=268108"},{"taxonomy":"auteurs","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/auteurs?post=268108"},{"taxonomy":"artistes","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artistes?post=268108"},{"taxonomy":"thematiques","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/thematiques?post=268108"},{"taxonomy":"type_compte-rendu","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/type_compte-rendu?post=268108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}