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Tazeen Qayyum: A Facade of Beauty and Integrated Fear

Tazeen Qayyum: A Facade of Beauty and Integrated Fear

Tazeen Qayyum: A Facade of Beauty and Integrated Fear

May 15th – July 31st, 2022
Riverdale Gallery 3rd floor
(By appointment only, closed Mondays. Contact [email protected].)
*Opening reception: May 15th, 12pm – 5pm

In 2002, Tazeen Qayyum began a series of work that fosters ideals of resilience and survival in unfavorable circumstances or unsympathetic environments. As a response to the American propaganda that fueled the ‘War on Terror’, this series presents the cockroach as a motif on how political warfare has reduced the value of a human life to that of a household pest. For years, American political propaganda has been presented and packaged in a way to program fear of the ‘Other,’ just as society has been taught to fear the cockroach. In A Facade of Beauty and Integrated Fear, Qayyum disputes this programming by delicately presenting painted cockroaches in an archival manner. This preservation style remodels institutional education, allowing Qayyum’s own experience to inform her audiences on decades of war related upheavals. Through intricate compositions in the style of traditional Indian miniature painting, the cockroach becomes a site of tension between attraction and repulsion. The adorned carcasses invite viewers in before they are confronted with the immense discomfort of these lived realities. A Facade of Beauty and Integrated Fear reminds us that we must continue to mobilize against war, racism, and Islamophobia. Many of the concerns Qayyum faced twenty years ago are still pressing today. This exhibition is curated from a selection of works created between 2006-2009 and has been supported by The Ontario Arts Council.

 

Image: Tazeen Qayyum, Test on a Small Area before Use – 3 (detail), Opaque watercolor, entomology pins, paper labels and cotton thread on wasli (prepared archival paper) in wooden display case, 2007

Event Information

  1326 Gerrard St. E., 3rd Floor, Toronto, M4L 1Z1, Ontario, Canada
}  May 15, 2022 to July 31, 2022
  Sunday, 10:00 am to 04:00 pm
  4164656021
n  Gallery Events
  Riverdale Hub Gallery event
  https://riverdalehub.ca
  [email protected]
    o
   Remaining Tickets: Unlimited | Free Admission

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   Riverdale Hub Gallery
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