roomtobreathe presents: Connective Tissue
April 27 – May 8, 2022
Opening reception: April 28, 6:30 – 9:30 pm
[ ]tobreathe is a collective of new media artists. Born out of a lack of space in the city, the collective aims to create room for themselves in the artistic community both physically and metaphorically. They explore relationships with various systems, allowing for the discovery of counter narratives, fictions, and alternate histories. Their practices recall, rewrite, and remix intersections with technology in order to demonstrate its influence and reassert their role in its use.
Technology is not the antithesis of nature. Instead, technology has become an extension of our own nature, and therefore requires investigation—not only as an access point for newer means of socialization and organization but also as a political and emotional force in our daily lives. To assume that technology is separate from us—neutral in its governance over our routines—is to ignore its encoded meanings, its inherent biases, and its visceral impact on how we move through the world. Connective Tissue is a group show that investigates technology as a tool of emotionality; a tool imbued with humanness that demonstrates empathy through a process of decoding. As an instrument of social ciphering, technology becomes an apparatus for storytelling saturated with hidden meaning.
Mads is a practicing new media artist and designer located in Toronto, Canada. Her work concerns a fictional world in which acrylic-based entities develop and evolve.
Shihab Mian is a multidisciplinary artist who works with media and creative coding. His work puts emphasis on emotion, human-connection, and technology’s role in our interconnected world.
Tristan Sauer is a New Media artist and curator critically focused on technology, capitalism, and the intersections between our digital and physical worlds.
Raavi Dhillon is a multidisciplinary artist, exploring themes of identity, relationships, and intimacy through the creation of physically computed, interactive, and kinetic sculptures.
Madelaine Frank is a New Media artist, exploring the interstices of feminist and technological issues. Her work tends to give viewers an uncanny mix of emotions by contrasting innocence with darker themes.
Ofir Rosen is a Creative Coder, Creative Technologist, and New Media artist in Toronto. Their practice focuses on designing alternative input devices and how these devices can influence the emotionality of human computer interaction.
The six new media artists of the show invite viewers to decode, decipher, and unravel the stories that have been intimately connected to technology.