SuperNova is a multidisciplinary video installation centred around multiple personas that cleverly deconstruct ethnic and gender stereotypes. In the video, a trio of characters—Oreo, Fatimeh and Coco—compete as contestants on SuperNova, an American Idol-style galactic talent show adjudicated by a panel of extraterrestrial judges. Alongside her role as the breathless host of SuperNova, the artist performs all seven characters within a narrative that at once parodies reality television while critiquing popular cultures’ predilections towards exoticizing difference.
Please register online at Eventbrite and join us for an informative and engaging conversation between artist and curator, moderated by Ivan Jurakic, Director/Curator of UWAG.
Rah is a media and performance artist who has exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally at spaces including: Images Festival, Carleton University Art Gallery, Miami Art Basel, Nieuwe Vide (Netherlands), Art Basel (Switzerland), Cable Factory (Helsinki, Finland), Kunst Am Spreeknie (Berlin), Kunsthaus Graz Museum (Austria), Williams College Museum of Art (MA, USA) and Onassis Cultural Center (Athens, Greece). She has been the recipient of numerous awards and residencies including: Chalmers Arts Fellowship, Canada Council, SSHRC Canada Graduate Scholarship, ArtSlant Georgia Fee Residency (Paris) and the Studio Das Weisse Haus Residency (Vienna).
Heather Anderson is Curator at Carleton University Art Gallery, where she integrates an artist-centered approach to exhibition making within an interdisciplinary environment. Recent exhibitions include The Baroness Elsa Project (2021), Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay: I Don’t Know Where Paradise Is (2020), Shannon Finnegan: Lone Proponent of Wall-to-Wall Carpet (2020, with Fiona Wright), Rah: SuperNova (2019); Linda Sormin: Fierce Passengers (2018), Annie Thibault: La chambre des cultures, foraging in time and space (2017), Meryl McMaster: Confluence (2016) and Making Otherwise: Craft and Material Fluency in Contemporary Art (2014).
SuperNova is on display in UWAG until December 8. For more info or to book a viewing please visit our website.