Koffler Arts

Koffler Arts is a multi-disciplinary platform for contemporary visual art, performance, and literary events, that situates the contemporary Jewish experience within broader social, historical, and cultural conversations on identity, memory, and place. Through feature exhibitions, live performances, publications, public programs, and educational initiatives, Koffler Arts supports the creation and promotion of new and existing works by Canadian and international artists.

Botannica Tirannica | Giselle Beiguelman

Botannica Tirannica by award-winning Brazilian artist Giselle Beiguelman explores how common botanical names both mirror and perpetuate societal prejudices against racial, cultural, gender, and social groups.

Beiguelman worked closely with two Indigenous experts to situate the exhibition in a Canadian context: Dr. Jonathan Ferrier, a Mississauga, Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) scientist and a Biology professor at Dalhousie University, and Isaac Crosby, a Black/Ojibwa knowledge keeper, gardener and agriculture expert. Dr. Jonathan Ferrier collaborated with Beiguelman on a display of living plants in the gallery each with prejudicial names. Isaac Crosby planted The Garden of Resilience outside the exhibition in front of the Youngplace building on Shaw Street. The garden includes various plant species – considered to be invasive “weeds”.

Alongside the display of plants, visitors to the gallery will engage with two series of images created using Artificial Intelligence (AI) – one series of still images, the other series in video – of reimagined hybrid plants that are positioned as resistant and resilient life forms in a post-natural, decolonialized garden. The exhibition will also include a soundscape by São Paulo-based composer, visual artist, and researcher Gabriel Francisco Lemos.