geographies of longing

Opening Reception
Saturday, April 5, 2 – 4 pm
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Body mapping is an expressive process that uses images and stories to reflect on lived experience. geographies of longing explores the agility of video as an embodied mapping tool. In this single-channel video, Oghenofegor Obuwoma draws on the medium’s visual and material ability to conjure unknowability, manifest slippages in memory, and layer geographies and spans of time, to trace a complex portrait of her own life across two continents. “We know that borders are not real,” Obuwoma asserts, “that a body can reach across space and time, can defy imposed entries and exits.” geographies of longing meditates on spatial sites of potency in the artist’s childhood Nigerian home from coincident perspectives of intimacy, illegibility, and distance.

In SFU’s Harbour Centre Lounge, a public study and meeting space defined by its massive picture window framing views of the North Shore mountains and working shoreline, geographies of longing is presented in multi-dimensional form. As Obuwoma creates her videos to be intentionally arrested or “held” in stillness, two monumentally-scaled, floor-to-ceiling video stills face one another across the Lounge. These images bracket a third view through the window. This installation creates an immersive visual predicament that so many visitors will know achingly well in their own bodies: the experience of inhabiting multiple places, identities, and stories at once. A QR code invites visitors to experience the video with sound in full through their smart phones and tablets, and in Belzberg Library, immediately adjacent to the Lounge, a video monitor with headphones offers a further accessible experience of the work.

Presented by SFU Galleries in partnership with SFU Belzberg Library.