Testing the limits of the photographic, Nadia Belerique's (b. 1982, Toronto) images have a strong sense of pre-Photoshop materiality, and yet they are deeply embedded in digital techonogy. They opt for a manual imprint of the cutout as editing mode, over the virtuosity of composition. They are abstract dimensions in themselves, challenging the hierarchies of our belief in sight and vision. Most of her recent photographs have been made in an office scanner.
Such is the case of the series The Archer, created with a digital image scanner and found filters—analog tools for manipulating images—from the archives of the newspaper The Toronto Star. In this series, small digital images float in the printed black zenith of the Xerox, alluding to the virtual dimension of the cutout, as they lie abstracted in a grayscale horizon. Thin silhouettes of objects are identifiable, such as a necklace, or part of a golden package. With a studied control of the amount of light shining through the image, all elements are carefully placed, even the fingerprints of the author. The procedural event of image making is left behind, haunting the viewer with its implacable simplicity.
The installation of the work in GB11 also includes a long white carpet with footsteps, made by applying chemicals to the carpet, which is there for visitors to walk on, as another way of leaving indexical traces, but also to offer a visceral experience as they approach the works in sight.
Processing the dimensionality of space, other works by the artist depict the same fascination with the boundaries of images and their collage-like quality. In The Counselor (2014), “two image-objects which are life-size and freestanding photographs of cardboard cut-outs in the shape of human bodies, mounted to corrugated plastic board” confronts us with the relation between “the observer and the observed.” Departing from our expectations for perceptive engagement with determinate figures—i.e., the human body—Belerique challenges the norm for viewers’ encounters with the photograph through the performativity of her images. MM
self-presentation:
Portuguese-Canadian, youngest of three sisters. I'm currently working on a solo exhibition called “Bed Island.” It was a body of work which began during a three-month residency at Fogo Island Arts, Fogo Isand, Newfoundland. My experience on Fogo Island was nothing like when I worked as a set painter on the film Total Recall 2, but it reminded me of when I was a set painter on the film Total Recall 2. I like thinking about the double-slit experiment or Young's experiment, The Divided Self by RD Laing, or ontological insecurity. The Councellor, a work first exhibited at Gallery TPW, Toronto, changed my practice. Women have had me thinking: Tiziana la Melia, Sojourner Truth Parsons, Laurie Kang, Lili Huston-Herterich. A teacher, Nina Levitt, shifted the way I thought about images. An important job for me was as a photo editor at The Toronto Star newspaper. I love Antonio Romano.
