Presence in a past or an undetermined future.
Delaney Family Emerging Curator’s Prize

January 22 to May 17, 2025 

Guest Curated by Avalon Mott 

Presence in a past or an undetermined future. is a two-person exhibition featuring Nabil Azab and Shannon Garden-Smith that endeavours to hold a moment of presence by calling on what came before it, and giving space to think of what will come after it. Through the immersive work of these artists, viewers are encouraged to engage in an act of prolonged looking and moved towards a space of affect. It is in this space and the coalescing of history and future, that the present moment emerges.

Artists:

Nabil Azab 

Shannon Garden-Smith 

_{Above Image Credit: Nabil Azab, January 1, 2021., 2024, Vinyl printed photographic image, 9' 5¼ x 14' 6¼ in. Image courtesy of the artist.}

About the Curator

Avalon Mott (she/her) is a curator, photographer, and arts administrator originally from Vancouver, British Columbia, now calling Tkaronto/Toronto home. She graduated with her BFA in photography from Emily Carr University of Art + Design in 2013, and her MFA in Criticism + Curatorial Practice from OCAD University in 2023 as the recipient of the Presidential Scholarship and Ontario Graduate Scholarship.

Mott was a founding member and the co-director of FIELD Contemporary (Vancouver), and has curated for numerous galleries and festivals in British Columbia and Ontario. She has also curated public art installations for the City of Richmond, the City of Vancouver, and Capture Photography Festival. Alongside her current position as director at Xpace Cultural Centre (Toronto), she is a contributing member of The Plumb (Toronto).

Mott’s curatorial practice is rooted in Exhibitionary Affect, and how this curatorial methodology can aid in fostering a relational experience between the viewer and the works on display in the exhibition space.

About the Artists

Nabil Azab (he/him b.1994, Paris, France) is a multidisciplinary artist of North African descent. Nabil employs drawing, painting, writing, and researching as a starting point for abstract photographic works that resist the objectivity and disciplinarily of the medium in contemporary life. Often using public, private, and family archives, the softened contours of Nabil’s work become a host for the affective frequencies of their origin. Nabil is currently an MFA candidate at the University of California, Riverside and is located in Los Angeles, California.

Shannon Garden-Smith (she/her) is an artist based in Tkaronto/Toronto, Canada, of Scottish and Irish settler heritage. Working across sculpture, installation, and expanded photo practice, Garden-Smith examines the material-social impact of the surfaces that clad our contemporary built world. Through a slow, repetitive process that re-visibilizes how the day-to-day architectures of our lives become naturalized through repeated exposure, her work re-sensitizes us to the labour and material that sustain our everyday. Engendering slippages between surface and structure, her work examines labour, identity, and power in human-built architectures, seeking to intervene into capitalist, productivist modes of telling time and modes of relation. Garden-Smith is a doctoral student in visual art at York University. 

Onsite Gallery is generously supported by The Delaney Family.