Talk with Art Collective Gendai and Collaborator Jasmine Mander

Please join us for a talk by the art collective Gendai with collaborator Jasmine Mander on Monday, March 27, in the Stanford Perrott Lecture Theatre, at the Alberta University of the Arts.

Gendai (Marsya Maharani and Petrina Ng) is an art collective based in Tkaronto/Toronto dedicated to racialized artists as the next generation of cultural leaders, radical thinkers, and visionaries. 

Throughout its twenty-year history, Gendai has supported experimental curatorial and organizational practices, whilst creating space for East Asian artists and artists of colour. As Gendai’s newest stewards, Marsya and Petrina are investing in the future of racialized arts leadership through collective research and practice. We began with Gendai MA MBA: Mastering the Art of Misguided Business Administration: a year-long capacity-development & network-building think tank between nine majority-BIPOC art collectives to critique and re-imagine institutional practices by centering values of collectivity, equity, and access. This developed into Gendai CO-OP: an ongoing research that responds to toxic labour conditions especially experienced by BIPOC arts workers at museums and art galleries. MA MBA and CO-OP collaborators continue to meet via a bi-monthly casual drop-in to share stories and solicit advice from each other. Using gossip as a methodology to trace the contours of institutional power, they build relationships with emerging and mid-career arts practitioners of colour to learn about current workplace dynamics in the sector. By offering peer mentorship and access to Gendai’s platform, resources, and network, they invite collaborators to  support each other in pursuing non-institutional futures and imagine “off-ramps” from the linear expressway of traditional, capitalist, and institutional career progression in the arts. Petrina and Marsya are informed by their roles and responsibilities as racialized settlers and uninvited guests working and learning on Tkaronto (Toronto), which is on the treaty lands and territories of the Mississaugas of the Credit, and the traditional territories of the Wendat, the Haudenosaunee, the Chippewa, and the Anishinabeg First Nations.

Jasmine Mander is a Niagara based emerging artist, curator and arts worker. She is currently the Curatorial Assistant at the Art Gallery of Burlington and her curatorial practice and research examines the loss of generational knowledge. Jasmine’s most recent exhibitions include Noni Kaur’s Nazar na lage/Knock on Wood, Yen Linh Thai’s Mother Tongue, and Incoming! - a project that directly addresses the needs of refugee, newcomer, and immigrant artists in the Hamilton region.

She holds a BA in Fine Arts and Business from the University of Waterloo and has developed public programming for the McMaster Museum of Art, the Living Arts Centre, the Hamilton Artists Inc. and the Art Gallery of Burlington. Recent projects include ECHO, a book club centering the voices of Global Majority community members and the Living Library, a flexible, all-ages programming space which promotes rest and provides free and equitable access to events. She is an ongoing collaborating artist with the Toronto-based art collective Gendai, experimenting with ways to support other emerging, racialized arts practitioners.

Mander and Gendai are collaborating on Gendai GED: Guerrilla Equity Development (GED) at Esker Foundation. Applications are currently open for a leadership camp for BIPOC youth (ages 15-20) from March 27 to 31. BIPOC youth and allies are welcome to drop-in for workshops by Making Space, Alcove Centre, and Yolkless Press from March 28 to 30 at 6:30 to 8:30pm.