Nichola Feldman-Kiss the chimaera set (2005-2006) digital transparency, light box 105 x 105 x 20 cm collection of the artist

Nichola Feldman-Kiss refers to this mean body project as an "expanded performance of self-portraiture". It is a melding of traditional explorations of the figure with scientific research on the human shape…in this case her own toned physique.

After training to obtain her desired body image Feldman-Kiss posed for a three-dimensional whole body scan. The resulting database consists of eighty-two three-dimensional data sets.

These data sets were used to create representations of her body in a variety of media. The mean body project includes a video animation, a large grid of ink-jet prints, a group of plastic rapid-prototype sculptures, four back-lit transparencies, a very large professionally bound book of data, several small bronze sculptures and a contract licensing research rights to the data.

Also included in this exhibition are large scale contour drawings generated from this same data.

This exhibition, although routed in the technology used to generate the various components, draws reference to past traditions of self portraiture and previous scientific efforts to determine standardized body-shapes through more rudimentary body measurement data.

It further explores how minor changes in the data can result in unfamiliar and almost eerie images barely recognizable as the human form. Kim Sawchuk, author of the text for the accompanying catalogue, refers to these components as uncanny. Her in-depth analysis of this mean body project touches on social and cultural issues associated with body type and the stereo typical images of the female form, of gender and power.

As Feldman-Kiss herself notes, "I am interested in how the body has been measured historically, creatively, scientifically, anthropologically and how value has been attributed because of differences."

This display is a historical, social and cultural examination of the friendship between these two cities. Mississauga and Kariya officially became sister cities in 1981. Since this time, a special bond has been built through social and cultural exchanges. The history of the twinning and some aspects of Japanese culture are highlighted.

The Museums of Mississauga and students and teachers from Stephen Lewis Secondary School have worked together to develop this new exhibit, featuring 40 works of art created by grade ten and eleven students at this new school.  Through photography and painting the students explore ideas and feelings of their own place within their surrounds of Mississauga's past, present and future.

“Triple Bill” by Isabelle Pauwels
In the Blackwood Gallery, Belgian-Canadian artist Isabelle Pauwels, who lives in Vancouver, has installed her video projection Triple Bill, set up as a mini-cinema in the gallery. Comprised of appropriated film, a series of subtitled monologues, and an unexpected encounter, this trio of videos recounts Pauwels’ explorations within a number of notorious, now either dilapidated or demolished porn theatres in Vancouver. Her installation curiously and brashly explores contemporary morality, feminine identity, representations of sexuality, historical feminist interventions into public realms, and shifting urban and subcultural space. A catalogue, produced in collaboration with Artspeak, will be launched in late April.
Location: Blackwood Gallery (Kaneff Building)

“Cineplastic Campus” by Stéphane Gilot
Belgian-Canadian artist Stéphane Gilot, who lives and works in Montreal, has transformed the eGallery (and its adjacent Video Wall, both in the CCT Building) into his project Cineplastic Campus. As artist-in-residence with the gallery, Gilot has worked with university faculty and artists to produce a series of lectures on subjects that range from new media culture, photography and the uncanny, pedagogy and perception, representations of contemporary identity, the worlds of cyberspace, and possible convergences of these subjects. These lectures take place in an elaborate model of UTM campus that Gilot has carefully constructed in the eGallery.
Location: eGallery (CCT Building)