AFK | Residencies

AiR: Alize Zorlutuna

Alize Zorlutuna

Location

Ace Hotel Toronto

51 Camden St, Toronto, ON M5V 1V2

Street level entrance, elevator and ramp available. Accessible gender neutral and single occupancy washroom with automatic door.

For a map of Ace Hotel Toronto, click here

COVID-19 Policy

Images Festival is committed to providing an accessible festival and continues to work to reduce barriers to participation at our events. This year, we are implementing a COVID-19 policy to reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission for all, and to prioritize the participation of people who are disability-identified, immunocompromised, or part of an otherwise vulnerable group.

The following guidelines will be in place: Self-Assessment: We ask that staff and participants screen themselves for COVID-19 before visiting the exhibition.

Images Festival is partnering with Ace Hotel in Toronto for a yearlong partnership to curate their inaugural Artist in Residence (AiR) Program. Four artists have been invited to participate in quarterly, month-long residencies at the hotel followed by an exhibition of their work. The residency takes place under the theme of (g)host, extending the 2023 festival’s central inquiry and foregrounding moving images to contend with ideas at the intersection of archives, spirit, care, and hospitality.

The first artist to be invited to participate in this residency is Alize Zorlutuna. Alize Zorlutuna is a queer interdisciplinary artist, writer and educator whose work explores relationships to land, culture and the more-than-human, while thinking through, history, ancestral wisdom and healing. Having moved between Tkarón:to and Anatolia (present-day Turkey) both physically and culturally throughout their life has informed Alize’s practice—making them attentive to spaces of encounter. Alize has presented work in galleries and artist-run centers across Turtle Island, including: Plug In ICA, InterAccess, Gallery TPW, VIVO Media Arts Centre, Mercer union Centre For Contemporary Art, Doris McCarthy Gallery, Art Gallery of Burlington, XPACE, Audain Art Museum, Access Gallery, as well as internationally at The New School: Parsons (NY), Mind Art core (Chicago) and Club Cultural Matienzo (Argentina). Alize has been a sessional instructor in the Faculty of Art at OCAD University since 2015.

The Ace residency has long nurtured the work of emerging artists. During their Artist in Residence stay Alize Zorlutuna will develop collage work that responds to the context of Ace Hotel Toronto and their experience as Artist in residence. At the conclusion of their residency, Alize’s work will be showcased to the community.

Alize Zorlutuna

Alize Zorlutuna is a queer interdisciplinary artist, writer and educator whose work explores relationships to land, culture and the more-than-human, while thinking through settler-colonialism, history, and solidarity. Having moved between Tkarón:to and Anatolia (present-day Turkey) both physically and culturally throughout their life has informed Alize’s practice—making them attentive to spaces of encounter. Alize enlists poetics and a sensitivity to materials in works that span video, installation, printed matter, performance and sculpture. The body and its sensorial capacities are central to their work. Alize has presented their work in galleries and artist-run centres across Turtle Island, including: Plug In ICA, InterAccess, VIVO Media Arts Centre, Mercer union Centre For Contemporary Art, Doris McCarthy Gallery, Art Gallery of Burlington, XPACE, Audain Art Museum, Access Gallery, as well as internationally at The New School: Parsons (NY), Mind Art core (Chicago) and Club Cultural Matienzo (Argentina). Alize has been a sessional instructor in the Faculty of Art at OCAD University since 2015.

Presented With:

Images Festival operates on land stolen from the Anishinaabe, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, the Huron-Wendat, and the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. Tkáron:to is currently home to diverse Indigenous and Métis peoples as well as people who settle on this land. As part of Treaty 13 and the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Covenant, we acknowledge that we all eat from the same bowl and spoon, and must take only what we need, ensuring resources are available for all.

As art workers, artists, and curators, we see the process of untangling ourselves from settler complicity as internal, structural, and ongoing. It is not something to be taken lightly. The inclusion of Indigenous artists and curators into our program is just the first step of necessary and deeper change. Extending from our organizational accountability work, we strive to not only undo forms of complicity, but also actively create an environment and infrastructure that can support Indigenous peoples who work with us.

Images expresses our solidarity with Indigenous people on Turtle Island and globally. We are committed to continuing to learn, critique, and challenge the settler colonial structures we are complicit in.