Archival Affections [Themed Commission 2021]

August 27 – November 25, 2021

Presented by Trinity Square Video and supported by the EQ Bank

Featuring works by Vanessa Godden, Monique Todd, Lana Lovell, Yuula Benivolski, Camila Salcedo, Kasra Jalilipour

Curated by Karina Iskandarsjah

Archival Affections presents the 2021 Themed Commissions, which were produced over a summer residency. This year’s theme invites projects that critically look at one’s relationship to archives; both non-fiction and fictional materials that account for public, private, and cultural memory. Six artists create new digital work that speculates upon unfinished, historical narratives and buried family histories, and re-imagines the physical and metaphorical traces of lost people and places. 

In this online presentation, each digital work grapples with various subjects of personal importance: 19th century Iranian imagery through a queer lens; remembering Black resistance and slavery in Canada; sonic representations of the experience of Venezuelan-Canadadian diaspora; disappeared citizens of the USSR; Indo-caribbean migration; and cataloguing spaces of queer joy and pleasure in London (UK). Taking form as a transmedia, online exhibition, each work convenes a broad range of forms, including: field recording, mapping, oral narratives, 3D imaging, forensic fingerprinting, and ASMR. Archival Affections centres modalities of curiosity, speculation, and fiction to meaningfully resurrect and build upon archival material; reimagining and reclaiming the past and present as acts of survivance and resistance. 

Visit www.archivalaffections.com to explore the rich subjects and dynamic presentations of this year’s 2021 Themed Commission! (launching 27th August)

Archival Affections is made possible through the support of EQ Bank.

+ image credit: Yuula Benivolski