Exhibition Statement
Human is a daunting word. One that we thought could never be grasped until it is behind us and too far away to see. Humans at thresholds even more so. But our current pandemic life has created a staggering rift in reality – where we float, frozen yet active, occupying uncharted territories that transform normality into a threshold in itself. We find ourselves shifting our gestures of engagement, reflection, and exploration. The liminal space, ultimately, has become a resource.
As students of digital OCAD U, existing in a scattered spacetime has allowed us to touch on something surprisingly unifying– being a human in transition. What are we – in those grey areas of waiting? As altered bodies? As creatures expressing our meaning to the earth, or deciding what meaning even is? Who are we, existing between feeling the outside and inside, retreating and reaching out, being other or local, visible and invisible?
We are no longer, ever, static. We move, transforming, attached to the marks we make, and the gestures we offer - to each other, ourselves, to our non-human counterparts.
Human is a daunting noun, but it can also be a hopeful verb.
With that, a new, hybrid word becomes the apex of the diverse, multi-media work of OCAD U’s third year Sculpture and Installation students. Huminality becomes the binding facet of an exploration into humanness, otherness, and what it means to tread the planet, peer in, call out, and stumble.