Chantal Khoury – Carrying Lace and Soil LiveEvents January 31, 2022 1635 McClure Gallery presents Chantal Khoury – Carrying Lace and Soil Exhibition: February 4 to 26, 2022 Virtual Artist-Guided Tour: February 3 at 5 pm Art Hive with Chantal Khoury (online): February 26, 10:30 am to 1 pm Through her paintings, Chantal Khoury acknowledges the gap in Lebanon’s recorded history and the impulse to offset cultural withdrawal. She approaches meaning and methodology by threading Lebanese historiography with techniques of erasure in the studio. In the exhibition Carrying lace and soil, Khoury re-imagines inherited family objects brought to Canada through immigration. Her paintings of functional objects such as bowls and cloth have meaning beneath their surface. In removing paint, she creates ahistorical forms separated from their referents, focusing on forming rather than the form. Khoury regards the process of erasure as a productive metaphor for identity-forming within displacement. Lebanese artist and writer Jalal Toufic plays a crucial role in the images Khoury builds. In citing Toufic’s ideas on withdrawal in post-war societies Khoury catalyzes the legacy of erasure in painting toward a transnational framework, widening the scholarship beyond Western citations to allow other dialogues. The paintings originate from experiences of dislocation and meditate on history and memory. They aim to resurrect culture yet sustain the awareness of that impossibility and display cultural signs loyal to the diaspora’s experience. Chantal Khoury is a Canadian artist of Lebanese descent and was born on the unceded territory of the Wolastoqiyik and Mi’kmaq First Nations/New Brunswick. She currently lives and works in Tkaronto/Toronto and was previously based in Tiohtia:ke/Montreal for thirteen years. She received her MFA from the University of Guelph (2021) and her BFA with Distinction from Concordia University (2012). Solo exhibitions include the McClure Gallery (2022), Birch Contemporary (2021), the Beaverbrook Art Gallery (2020) and the University of New Brunswick (2014). Group exhibitions include the Beaverbrook Art Gallery (2020) and the Orillia Museum of Art & History (2018). Khoury’s work is included in the collections of the Royal Bank of Canada, the Art Gallery of Guelph, the University of New Brunswick and numerous private collections in Canada and Lebanon. Khoury’s commitment to art education spans several years, and she most recently worked as a Sessional Lecturer at the University of Guelph. “Chantal Khoury would like to acknowledge the generous funding support from the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario.” www.visualartscentre.ca/mcclure-gallery/ About the Visual Arts Centre and the McClure Gallery The Visual Arts Centre is an art school, a sought-after contemporary art venue and an outreach programme, where art is taught, made, exhibited and shared seven days a week, all year round. Founded in 1946 as a women-run ceramics collective and now in its 75th year, the Centre is a thriving cultural hub whose programmes support an essential artistic community and contribute to the intellectual and emotional well-being of individuals. The School of Art draws thousands of people annually from across the city to attend its art courses and workshops. Through its ARTreach outreach programme, the Centre continues to work with teens, seniors, at-risk populations, youth with special needs and community centres to enrich everyday lives in transformative ways. The McClure Gallery features approximately ten exhibitions of emerging and established artists each year, along with artist lectures and guided tours, regular ‘art hives’ and other special events, all of which have pivoted to online or hybrid formats since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. For each exhibition, an artist- or curator-guided gallery tour will be recorded and made accessible online on the McClure Gallery’s Facebook page and the Visual Art Centre’s YouTube channel. The gallery’s monthly ‘art hive’ mini-workshops, usually hosted by the exhibiting artist, are held the last Saturday of the month, in person if public health restrictions allow, and otherwise on Facebook Live. McClure Gallery 50 Victoria Avenue, just south of Sherbrooke Street, in Westmount (QC), H3Z 2N4 Gallery opening hours are Tuesday to Friday from 12 to 6 pm and Saturday from 12 to 5 pm. 514-488-9558 ext. 226
