without trying to be moved…we fall like light is a two-part exhibition presenting works by students of the 2020 graduating class of the Sheridan College and University of Toronto Mississauga joint Art & Art History program.

In light of the COVID-19 pandemic and the closure of the University of Toronto Mississauga, the 2020 Art & Art History Graduating Exhibitions were cancelled.

Digital exhibition content is available online via exhibition brochures for without trying to be moved... and we fall like light, as well as on their Instagram accounts: @withoutbeingmoved and @wefalllikelight.

The exhibitions are curated by students of FAH451: Curating Now. Designed to be presented across two gallery spaces, the Blackwood Gallery and the e|gallery, the exhibitions were to have featured works by eighteen artists collectively exploring the space between questions and statements—navigating through the tumultuous waters of emotion and memory, and dispersing light throughout the world by reflecting on their surroundings.

Works by: Jasaña Alleyne, Manroop Bhogal, Sabrina Bilic, Mackenzie Boyd, Jasmine Canaviri, Samuel di Gianni, Nada Hafez, Sarah Pereux, Andrea Shen, Tina Wang

Curatorial Team:
(un)titled: Charlie Bea, James Legaspi, Coleen Mariano, Christine Pacheco, Celine Polidario, Emma Sherland, Thang Vu

The title of the exhibition’s second half, we fall like light, cites Laurie Anderson’s Transitory Life, from the artist’s album Homeland. A commentary on life in America, the album explores alienation, environmental collapse, mistrust in authority—and their impacts on human bodies and psyches. These same concerns are taken up by the ten artists in the exhibition, who work through drawing, painting, sculpture, and video to confront underlying forces shaping their world: namely, the malleability of personal experience in relation to one’s culture, contemporary environmental crises, worldwide strife, and resistance to establishment power structures.

Just as light bounces off the world and illuminates its constituent elements, organizing systems, and malfunctions, these artists shed light on the makings of their distinct life experiences. To understand how environment, inclusive of the geographic, the cultural, the political, and the natural, shape life: refraction. To inquire, to throw oneself to the wills of the world to reach new understandings: dispersion. To seek answers and voice assertions, to call attention to one’s surroundings: illumination. To disrupt, to emphasize, to bring to light: interference. To critically engage with one’s position in this new decade and all its histories, physical makings, and conditions: reflection. To enter into the world as new voices and forces of creative production: to fall like light.