Julia Eilers Smith
Concordia University (Canada), Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, Max Stern Curator of Research and Exhibitions
Curator, Researcher, Writer and Art historian
Max Stern Curator of Research at the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, Concordia University, Montreal.
Master’s degree from the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, NY.
Bachelor’s degree in Art History from Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM).
Held curatorial roles at the ICA London and the Hessel Museum of Art in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.
Exhibitions Manager at SBC Gallery of Contemporary, Montreal from 2015-2017.
Max Stern Curator of Research at the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, Concordia University, Montreal.
Master’s degree from the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, NY.
Bachelor’s degree in Art History from Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM).
Held curatorial roles at the ICA London and the Hessel Museum of Art in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.
Exhibitions Manager at SBC Gallery of Contemporary, Montreal from 2015-2017.
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Les artistes réuni·e·s dans l’exposition « Une scène pour la rébellion » portent un regard rétrospectif sur ces traditions théâtrales du 20e siècle qui ont servi des luttes révolutionnaires. Se faisant l’écho de leurs revendications politiques, revisitant leurs pièces et leurs actions tombées dans l’oubli, ils·elles choisissent de prolonger le projet émancipateur de ces mouvements théâtraux dans le présent et de l’examiner à la lueur des enjeux politiques de notre temps.
Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa, The Living and the Dead Ensemble and Ashes Withyman.
Translated from French by Robin Simpson.
"The artists assembled in the exhibition A Stage for Rebellion look back on these twentieth-century theatre traditions that served revolutionary struggles. By echoing their political demands and revisiting plays and actions that have faded from history, they draw into the present the emancipatory project of these theatre movements, examining them in light of the political issues of our time.
This exhibition brings to light a range of groups and experiences of radical theatre, from the militant performances of São Paulo’s Arena theatre to travelling medieval troupes as precursors to contemporary radical street theatre. We also find the Arab Workers Movement’s agitprop theatre in France, a university theatre group during the civil war in Guatemala, theatres serving anticolonial movements in the United Kingdom and working-class resistance in India, and, finally, an artists’ collective in Port-au-Prince taking hold of theatre to amplify their cries of revolt. Not simply performing or representing rebellion, these different movements instead inscribed their struggles into reality at the very moment that it took shape."
Published in ESPACE art actuel, Issue #131 (Spring-Summer 2022).
Even as she embodied a non-conforming gender and sexual identity, Hija de Perra (which translates to “daughter of a bitch” in Spanish) disavowed the term “queer” and offered a critique of queer theory as a field of study imported from the Global North. By the early 2000s, queer theoretical discourse had been translocated to Latin American academic settings and was becoming normalized. The artist, who emerged around that time, claimed that counter to its progressive aims, it “colonizes our poor, aspirational and third world South American context,” by imposing its rhetorics onto pre-existing local conceptions of sexual dissidence and disobedience.
Living in Foul draws attention to transnational critiques of queer theory and practices of sexual dissidence from the Southern hemisphere, for which Hija de Perra is a crucial reference point. Opening with a video of one of her academic lectures, the exhibition presents documentation of the artist’s live performances, alongside writings, photographs, video clips, and interviews. These are framed by a new commissioned installation by artist and writer Jota Mombaça (b. 1991), which offers a conceptual map for understanding the discursive and embodied practice of Hija de Perra. The installation features two veiled video-lectures, one by Mombaça and the other by artist Pêdra Costa (b. 1978), in which they problematize the idea of a subaltern speech and consider unconventional bodily organs as sites of knowledge production.
The first institutional presentation of Hija de Perra’s work in North America, Living in Foul contributes original research to scholarship around her work, also through a small publication accompanying the exhibition.
Videos, photographs, and archival materials in the exhibition from Arte en Acción, CUDS (Colectivo Universitario de Disidencia Sexual), Jorge Matta, Lorena Ormeño, Wincy Oyarce, Jorge Panchana, Rosita Peñaloza, Revista Fill, and Víctor Hugo Robles, “El Che de los Gays.”
Curated by Julia Eilers Smith
Or, émergeant parallèlement à ces attentes, existent des versions de l’histoire actuelle qui opèrent un véritable renversement d’approche en positionnant la fin comme une fin parmi tant d’autres, une fin qui a déjà eu lieu et qui surtout, est toujours en cours. De telles interprétations pointent vers les réalités sociale et matérielle de ceux et celles qui sont marqué.e.s par la violence des structures capitalistes raciales et coloniales avec leurs mécanismes débridés d’extraction, d’exploitation et de dépossession. Ce projet d’élargir les possibilités d’interprétation offertes par la formule apocalyptique et de présenter des fins et leurs sujets en des termes résolument différents – comme pluriels, toujours déjà, indéterminés – sert d’ancrage à l’exposition Ce qui n’est plus pas encore.
Emerging in parallel to these expectations, however, are versions of present history that realize a sharp reversal in approach, positioning the end as just one of many, one that has already happened and, perhaps most importantly, is still underway—ongoing in the present. Such renderings point to the social and material realities of those who are marked by the violence of racial and colonial capitalist structures with their unfettered mechanisms of extraction, exploitation, and dispossession. The project of stretching the interpretive possibilities offered by the apocalyptic formula, and casting endings and their subjects in decisively different terms—as plural, as always already, as undetermined—provides an anchor for the exhibition In the No Longer Not Yet.
Les artistes réuni·e·s dans l’exposition « Une scène pour la rébellion » portent un regard rétrospectif sur ces traditions théâtrales du 20e siècle qui ont servi des luttes révolutionnaires. Se faisant l’écho de leurs revendications politiques, revisitant leurs pièces et leurs actions tombées dans l’oubli, ils·elles choisissent de prolonger le projet émancipateur de ces mouvements théâtraux dans le présent et de l’examiner à la lueur des enjeux politiques de notre temps.
Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa, The Living and the Dead Ensemble and Ashes Withyman.
Translated from French by Robin Simpson.
"The artists assembled in the exhibition A Stage for Rebellion look back on these twentieth-century theatre traditions that served revolutionary struggles. By echoing their political demands and revisiting plays and actions that have faded from history, they draw into the present the emancipatory project of these theatre movements, examining them in light of the political issues of our time.
This exhibition brings to light a range of groups and experiences of radical theatre, from the militant performances of São Paulo’s Arena theatre to travelling medieval troupes as precursors to contemporary radical street theatre. We also find the Arab Workers Movement’s agitprop theatre in France, a university theatre group during the civil war in Guatemala, theatres serving anticolonial movements in the United Kingdom and working-class resistance in India, and, finally, an artists’ collective in Port-au-Prince taking hold of theatre to amplify their cries of revolt. Not simply performing or representing rebellion, these different movements instead inscribed their struggles into reality at the very moment that it took shape."
Published in ESPACE art actuel, Issue #131 (Spring-Summer 2022).
Even as she embodied a non-conforming gender and sexual identity, Hija de Perra (which translates to “daughter of a bitch” in Spanish) disavowed the term “queer” and offered a critique of queer theory as a field of study imported from the Global North. By the early 2000s, queer theoretical discourse had been translocated to Latin American academic settings and was becoming normalized. The artist, who emerged around that time, claimed that counter to its progressive aims, it “colonizes our poor, aspirational and third world South American context,” by imposing its rhetorics onto pre-existing local conceptions of sexual dissidence and disobedience.
Living in Foul draws attention to transnational critiques of queer theory and practices of sexual dissidence from the Southern hemisphere, for which Hija de Perra is a crucial reference point. Opening with a video of one of her academic lectures, the exhibition presents documentation of the artist’s live performances, alongside writings, photographs, video clips, and interviews. These are framed by a new commissioned installation by artist and writer Jota Mombaça (b. 1991), which offers a conceptual map for understanding the discursive and embodied practice of Hija de Perra. The installation features two veiled video-lectures, one by Mombaça and the other by artist Pêdra Costa (b. 1978), in which they problematize the idea of a subaltern speech and consider unconventional bodily organs as sites of knowledge production.
The first institutional presentation of Hija de Perra’s work in North America, Living in Foul contributes original research to scholarship around her work, also through a small publication accompanying the exhibition.
Videos, photographs, and archival materials in the exhibition from Arte en Acción, CUDS (Colectivo Universitario de Disidencia Sexual), Jorge Matta, Lorena Ormeño, Wincy Oyarce, Jorge Panchana, Rosita Peñaloza, Revista Fill, and Víctor Hugo Robles, “El Che de los Gays.”
Curated by Julia Eilers Smith
Or, émergeant parallèlement à ces attentes, existent des versions de l’histoire actuelle qui opèrent un véritable renversement d’approche en positionnant la fin comme une fin parmi tant d’autres, une fin qui a déjà eu lieu et qui surtout, est toujours en cours. De telles interprétations pointent vers les réalités sociale et matérielle de ceux et celles qui sont marqué.e.s par la violence des structures capitalistes raciales et coloniales avec leurs mécanismes débridés d’extraction, d’exploitation et de dépossession. Ce projet d’élargir les possibilités d’interprétation offertes par la formule apocalyptique et de présenter des fins et leurs sujets en des termes résolument différents – comme pluriels, toujours déjà, indéterminés – sert d’ancrage à l’exposition Ce qui n’est plus pas encore.
Emerging in parallel to these expectations, however, are versions of present history that realize a sharp reversal in approach, positioning the end as just one of many, one that has already happened and, perhaps most importantly, is still underway—ongoing in the present. Such renderings point to the social and material realities of those who are marked by the violence of racial and colonial capitalist structures with their unfettered mechanisms of extraction, exploitation, and dispossession. The project of stretching the interpretive possibilities offered by the apocalyptic formula, and casting endings and their subjects in decisively different terms—as plural, as always already, as undetermined—provides an anchor for the exhibition In the No Longer Not Yet.