Sarah Ciantar
Arts Editor
York alumna Diane Borsato visits the Art Gallery of York with the Terrestrial/Celestial exhibition which creates a mobile working environment, and displays captured moments of the unconventional interactions between subject and audience.
A brightly lit cabin stands out against the stark white walls, with the golden wood and enticing window drawing the viewer in. The mystery of the cabin intrigues others, and some stay in the cabin for periods of time, inviting others to immerse themselves with the art to do the same.
The time of inhabitants and student volunteer interact with other visitors or riding a bike placed in front of the cabin to generate power. The cabin is an inviting space with tables, plants and assorted images posted up on the western wall. The cabin also offers a quiet room, with a bed where visitors are able to rest and lie down.
This is the environment Borsato has created inside the AGYU with her work “Walking Studio.”
“Walking Studio” is an 11″x18″ foot building, segregated into seven sections. The building functions as a mobile studio that has the ability to be installed anywhere.
“The thing I enjoy most about the show is that it’s just as much about my experience here, as I try to best represent the work,” says Jessica Butler, fifth-year visual arts major and volunteer for this exhibit. Butler volunteers for the AGYU by giving some of her time to staying in the cabin over the course of the exhibition to help convey the environment Borsato is trying to achieve.
Further exploration into the gallery shows walls covered with pictures of candid shots inside black frames. The photos show Borsato work in action, and display a written explanation to support and explain the images to the viewer. Images show snapshots of moments that Borsato creates, making the interaction between the subjects and the viewer.
The weak points of this exhibitions lie in the essence of performance art itself. Borsato works are about the moments being created. The photos are meant to capture these moments and show them to a wider audience, not to be works themselves.
“It took me some time to fully understand that the gallery was just documentation of the art,” says Lena Suksi, a curatorial studies major at OCAD and volunteer curator for the AGYU. “Checking out the cabin and all the resources grew on me, and it is something I wish everyone could experience.”
One of the challenges this type of art presents is displaying works in a collective setting, like an exhibition. To an unaware viewer, the works could appear to be centred around the photography rather than the captured moment.
Performance art is essentially making the viewers react to something in an unconventional way. The art itself plays upon the reaction of the viewers, evoking emotions that are not typically experienced in the situation between performer and viewer.
Books of Borsato’s works are available around the gallery, allowing the viewer to fully submerse themselves in her works, and her artistic style. Flipping through glossy pages, a work of hers titled “Falling Pieces” stuck out. This performance piece, showcased in Toronto in 2010, was essentially six contemporary dancers hired by Borsato to stage “accidental” falls at a benefit gala party at the Art Gallery of Ontario. This work presented a theatrical and humorous element into the event and was something that broke down the barriers that can be surround high art.
The performance that the exhibition is centred around was the exchange of terrestrial and celestial knowledge that Borsato coordinated between mycologist and astronomers in Toronto and Vancouver from 2009 to 2010 . Borsato chose mycologist and astronomers because of how different their fields are: mycology relies heavily on the immediate use of senses, astronomy is based primarily on conceptualization and theory. Taking people out of their element and causing them to respond in ways that are atypical for them was what this performance was centred on.
As a whole the exhibition presented intriguing environment, that breaks away from the conventional showcase of art and allows the viewer to become a part of the works
