Regatu Asefa
Curator-in-Residence
February – June, 2025
&
Behind the Curtain
Exhibition at NAMARA projects 915 Dupont Avenue – Suite 103: April 17 – May 30, 2025
My Body Is Wherever It Has Something To Do invites multi-sensory encounters with art. Sound, touch, smell, taste, and sight become guiding forces in both the experience of the works and their spatial arrangement. The exhibition asks: How does the body meet art? Which senses are awakened in the encounter?
The exhibition title is a quote from French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty and serves as an ode to theories of perception that emphasize bodily engagement as foundations for existence. The body exists when it is activated; therefore, our experience in the world is shaped by sensory encounters. My Body Is Wherever It Has Something To Do urges us to reconnect with our senses and, through them, form our understanding of “self” within the exhibition.
Interactive artworks are present throughout, inviting engagement and shared experiences that draw the body and its senses into meaning-making.
Mani Mazinani‘s Saw Bells, for example, offers not only an auditory experience but also a haptic one, with vibrations felt while seated and facing the film. Pixel Heller’s stilts, too, are meant to be explored, connecting us to Pixel Jumbie–the artist’s stilt-walking persona–and Caribbean carnival practices. To further engage our bodies, Kendra Yee’s figurines are scattered throughout the exhibition, creating a treasure hunt-like experience. Step onto Yee’s pavement stones and propel yourself into the play.
As one moves through the space, My Body Is Wherever It Has Something To Do compels the body into action; we are drawn into the exhibition and in turn, the exhibition relies on our sensory engagements. My Body Is Wherever It Has Something To Do ultimately invites existential contemplation through sensory encounters: Who are we, and how do we exist in the world?
CURATOR
Regatu Asefa is a curator and arts educator living in Toronto. Her work explores sensory experiences and body engagement in the formations of place and identity. Her recent curatorial projects include Inviting the Conflict (Ottawa Art Gallery), 83 ‘Til Infinity: 40 Years of Hip-Hop in the Ottawa/Gatineau Region (Ottawa Art Gallery), and Where We Stand (Carleton University Art Gallery). She holds both an MA in Art and Architectural History and a Graduate Diploma in Curatorial Studies from Carleton University.
ARTIST
Pixel Heller is a multidisciplinary artist based in Toronto whose work spans performance, photography, textiles, ceramics and painting. Influenced by her Afro-Caribbean heritage, her practice engages with themes of Black identity, cultural preservation and carnival masquerade. Pixel’s art explores the complexities of heritage, tradition and the intersection of personal and collective histories. She graduated from OCAD University in 2024 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Cross-Disciplinary Studies with a specialization in Life Studies. Pixel’s work reimagines ancestral narratives within a contemporary framework, bridging past and present. Through masquerade, she explores the resilience and evolution of Black culture, shaping costume, sculpture, and performance into reflections of history and acts of resistance. Her practice serves as both an homage and a reinvention, an ongoing dialogue that honors the endurance of Black identity while inviting new possibilities for the future.
ARTIST
Mani Mazinani is a Toronto-based artist making installation, video, film, sculpture, photographs, multiples, sound and music. His practice evolved from an early interest in sound recording, now working with the process of translating thoughts into recordings. His visual work thinks about scale and perception, often combining subject matter and medium. Mazinani is currently researching origins of ancient thought, perceptual limitations of humans, and improvisation. Recent exhibitions/performances include MOCA, Toronto (2024), Tate Modern (2019), The Bentway, Toronto (2018), Tehran International Electronic Music Festival (2017), SIP Culture Centre, Suzhou (2016), Asian Art Museum, San Francisco (2015), CAB Art Centre, Brussels (2013).
ARTIST
Kendra Yee is an arts practitioner that seeks to materialize the truths and fictions of memory. Yee pulls tales from; personal stories, lived experience and collective narratives to develop site-specific installations that carve alternative archives. Yee has programmed and exhibited with: The Robert McLaughlin Gallery (Oshawa), Patel Brown (Toronto), Hearth (Toronto), Heavy Manners (Los Angeles), and Juxtapoz (NYC).
Below: Kendra Yee, Set in Stone, 2025, Ceramic, metal, 16 × 12 × 2 in (each).
Behind the Curtain
A community-led exhibition organized by Regatu Asefa
March 8 – April 4, 2025
“What happy memories do we hold dear, and who is present in those memories?”
Drawing on memories of happiness, Behind the Curtain explores joy and laughter in relationship-building. Moments of shared happiness allows us to bond intimately with one another, helping to shape our sense of self and community. The variations in laughter–effusive, subtle, eye-watering–remain within our bodies, ingrained by past experiences of communal delight.
Behind the Curtain is an exploratory and evolving exhibition. Challenging the often serious tone of exhibition spaces, the project invites joy as expressed through the body in laughter. It embraces playfulness found in everyday objects and people in our lives, relying on shared experiences of silliness, happiness, and carefree joy.
Simultaneously a celebration of laughter and happiness, Behind the Curtain explores the curatorial hand, attempting to unveil curatorial authority and knowledge while repositioning them within a collective. The project asks, “Who is a curator? Who constructs the narratives we encounter in art exhibitions?”
Finally, woven throughout the exhibition is an exploration of sensory encounters in curation. How is the body drawn into curating, and through which senses? Behind the Curtain seeks to reveal the bodily processes inherent in the practice of curation.
The project is in part community-curated, reflecting the communal and shared nature of laughter. It includes photographs and objects that community members have cherished and graciously loaned for the duration of the exhibition.
Public Programming
Community Curation Session 1
Saturday, March 8, 1 – 3 PM:
How do we connect to art? How does one image relate to another?
In the first session, Asefa led participants through an afternoon of community curating exercises. Together, the group explored connections between self and art, as well as examined aesthetic qualities as tools for curating. Moving through the collection of images and objects lent for the exhibition, the group developed the first edition of Behind the Curtain.
Community Curation Session 2
Saturday, March 22, 1 – 3 PM:
What stories can an image tell? What happy childhood memories do we carry within?
In the second session, Asefa led participants through an afternoon of community curating exercises. Together, the group explored storytelling, narrative, and childhood laughter. Moving through the collection of images and objects loaned for the exhibition, the group developed the second edition of Behind the Curtain.