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Video: Artist Brianna Wentz Responds to Manuel Mathieu’s ‘World Discovered Under Other Skies’

Artist Brianna Wentz responds to selected works in Manuel Mathieu’s solo exhibition ‘World Discovered Under Other Skies’.

*Closed caption correction, artist mentioned at 1:27 is Glenn Brown not Gordon Brown*

‘World Discovered Under Other Skies’ is organized and circulated by The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto, sponsored by the TD Ready Commitment and supported by Lead Donors Steven & Lynda Latner; and Major Donors Fonds Hamelys, Pamela J. Joyner, and Jay Smith & Laura Rapp. 

Manuel Mathieu (b. 1986 in Port-au-Prince, lives and works in Montreal). He received his BFA from Université du Québec à Montréal and his MFA from Goldsmiths, University of London. Mathieu was an artist in residence at Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart (2019-20), and the Pamela Joyner and Alfred J. Giuffrida residency program, Sonoma CA (2019). Recent solo exhibitions have been held at Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (2020); HDM Gallery, Beijing (2019); The Armory Show, New York (2018); Tiwani Contemporary, London (2017); and Institute of Contemporary Art, London (2015). He has participated in numerous group exhibitions held in Canada, the United States, and Europe, including Fondation Phi, Montreal (2020); Pérez Art Museum Miami (2019); Frieze London (2018); Art Basel (2017); and Grand Palais, Paris (2014). Mathieu was one of the artists recognized by the 2020 Sobey Art Award.

Amin Alsaden is a curator, educator, and scholar of art and architecture, whose work focuses on transnational solidarities and exchanges across cultural boundaries. With a commitment to advancing social justice through the arts, Alsaden’s curatorial practice contributes to the dissemination of more diverse, inclusive, and global narratives, by decentering and expanding existing canons, and challenging hegemonic knowledge and power structures. He is particularly interested in how artists and architects interrogate collective agency in the public realm and level institutional critique, while envisioning novel visual and spatial responses to the experiences of alienation and belonging. Alsaden’s research explores the history and theory of modern and contemporary art and architecture globally, with specific expertise in the Arab and Muslim worlds. Having taught at several institutions at both the graduate and undergraduate levels, Alsaden regularly serves as an invited lecturer and critic at art, curatorial, and design programs. He teaches at several institutions, and has published and lectured widely.

Brianna Wentz (she/her) is a Winnipeg-based painter. Though her family is super Mennonite, she is also German (Southeastern Germany), Dene (Churchill, Manitoba), and Swampy Cree (Tataskweyak Cree Nation).

Brianna’s practice probes obsession and fetishization as the by-products of disconnection, which in Internet speak, roughly translates to “ 8==D… o_O???”. Her style draws influence from horror films, love metal, corpse paint, Romanticism, and German Expressionism.

Brianna holds a BFA (Hons.) from the University of Manitoba and did an exchange at the University of Lapland in Rovaniemi, Finland. She has exhibited paintings, murals, and collaborative public installations in Canada and Finland. She has sat on the Curatorial Committee for the Wall-to-Wall Arts and Culture Festival in 2020, has co-curated with Synonym Art Consultation and has painted several murals around Winnipeg. Currently, Brianna works as the Special Projects Coordinator at aceartinc. In summer, she does mural commissions. On Saturdays, she pole dances.