Small Between the Stars, Large Against the Sky

Ikon’s Director Jonathan Watkins is curator of Manif d’art 9 – The Quebec City Biennial 2019.  Entitled Small Between the Stars, Large Against the Sky paraphrasing lyrics by Quebec-born singer songwriter Leonard Cohen (Stories Of The Street, 1967), it is concerned with the place of humanity now in the natural order. Artists include Shuvinai Ashoona, Polly Apfelbaum, Dinh Q. Lê, Meryl McMaster, Kelly Mark, Britta Marakatt-Labba, Haroon Mirza, Cornelia Parker, Susan Philipsz and Beat Streuli.

“…the artistic response to stars and skies (and rivers and waterfalls and frozen harbours) is here not so much one of representation, but rather of the apprehension of where we are, against and between enormities often taken for granted. In this vein, the inclusion of several indigenous and aboriginal artists – descendants of people who preceded the building of cities – is very pertinent, making us more aware of how our ways of seeing, like our value systems, are culturally determined.”