#AGAlive | GGArts Series: Zainub Verjee

Zainub Verjee and the Praxis of a Critical Transversal Aesthetic: A conversation with Niranjan Rajah
Mon, Dec 21 at 6pm MST

Don't miss the first of many upcoming #AGAlive conversations featuring this year's Governor General's Award winners! Our first event with Zainub Verjee and Niranjan Rajah takes place on Monday Dec 21. Don't miss this dynamic pairing in conversation!

Register now on Webinarjam.

#AGAlive is presented with the support of the EPCOR Heart + Soul Fund.

Zainub Verjee began her career in the Vancouver arts community of the 1970s, which was steeped in interdisciplinary, intermedia, and intercultural practices. Having made her mark as an emerging artist, Zainub shifted the emphasis of her work to curatorial, administrative and policy arenas. Applying the insight, creativity and criticality of an artist, she has brought ‘institutional critique’ into the workings of the institution itself. ‘Transversality’ is a concept developed by Felix Guattari that traverses the irreconcilability of ‘pure verticality’ and ‘simple horizontality’ as it connects the different levels or layers of a structure. Giles Deleuze esteems this concept as being of political importance because it is the very basis of ‘non-hierarchical relationships. Given the capacity of the institution to absorb and to denude art works of their politics and power, one might interpret Zainub’s movement, from art to institutional work, as the pursuit of a more effective transversal praxis.

Premised on this exhibition and taking the artworks as entry points, this conversation will develop an understanding of Zainub’s diverse oeuvre as the manifest practice of a critical transversal aesthetic.

Zainub Verjee will be in discussion with Niranjan Rajah who is an artist, theorist, curator and academic based at the School of Interactive Arts and Technology, Simon Fraser University.