TABLE DECONSTRUCTION at The Centre for Incidental Activisms

Public Studio & Eshrat Erfanian

The Art Gallery of York University, Toronto, Canada
January 19 – March 13, 2011

The Centre for Incidental Activisms at the AGYU proposed an entirely new way of working with artists, revealing and accentuating the ephemeral nature of the groundwork that goes into research-based practice, rather than focusing on a final outcome. The curators questioned how the production of art can be a form of activism, above and beyond the objects that artists create.

In this spirit, the curators constructed a table at the heart of the CIA for the purpose of meetings, to bring curators, artists, and community members together in collaborative scenarios under the auspices of research-based art practices. Rather than performing research on the table, however, and in keeping with the intention of the CIA, Public Studio, in collaboration with Eshrat Erfanian, decided to instead deconstruct the table. For the duration of the three-month exhibition at the AGYU, Public Studio activated the space by gradually disassembling the table, in the front gallery. Initially introducing small interventions and then escalating to the use of power tools, the activity was scheduled during gallery hours so that visitors would enter what seemed to be an active construction site.

video documentation

The Art Gallery of York University, 2011 Toronto, Canada Tamira Sawatzky, Elle Flanders, Eshrat Erfanian Deconstructing the table at AGYU was a simple gesture of rebellion that became more complicated as we learned the process and the inception of the table itself. The table was constructed for the purpose of meetings that were to bring curators and artists together to collaborate and discuss the process and research based art. The larger than life size of this very stable table is seen as a contradiction to the semi stable nature of art itself that creates instability in the way we see things and think. Therefore the deconstruction of the table becomes an act of returning the power of art to art itself, symbolically speaking, and freeing it from preconceived ideas of process or research base art.