Disruption, A-Space Gallery March 11th - April 22, 2023
This exhibition investigates how four women use their practices to disrupt a predominantly white, male, Eurocentric art narrative. This exhibition is part of the larger project to deconstruct society’s racist and sexist structural underpinnings with the aim of building a new foundation of multiplicity. Natalia Arbelaez, Magdolene Dykstra, Habiba El-Sayed, and Heidi McKenzie work to fashion a more egalitarian canon through artistic practices that delve into diverse histories. Arbelaez and McKenzie draw our attention to narratives that have long been overlooked. El Sayed and Dykstra use abstraction to subvert the spectator’s gaze, while simultaneously insisting upon their visibility.
…Heidi McKenzie’s ceramic sculpture First Wave (2021) grounds the exhibition with the history of labour and migration….Heidi McKenzie’s lantern series, Illuminated (2020-2021), highlights the use of photography as a tool for building empire….
— Maya Wilson-Sanchez
