Joshua Vettivelu
Vettivelu employs video, sculpture, and installation to delve into the phenomenological experience of citizenship. Focusing on the mobilization of neoliberal subjecthood within Canadian citizenship, Vettivelu examines the conditions that define one’s humanity in the eyes of a state and its citizens. Vettivelu traces the thresholds of empathy to explore how violence is rationalized against those whose humanity is rendered illegible.
Vettivelu is currently pursuing their MFA in Sculpture at Concordia University with the support of the Dale & Nick Tedeschi Studio Arts Fellowship. They have previously worked as the Visual Art Manager for Workman Arts, the Managing Director of Artspace TMU, and the Director of Programming at Whippersnapper Gallery. Vettivelu has exhibited in Trinity Square Video (Toronto), the Art Gallery of Ontario, the British Film Institute, Eastern Edge (St. John’s Nfld), The Academy of Arts in Prague, the Canadian Gay & Lesbian Archives Gallery (Toronto), the Center for Contemporary Art Glasgow, Nuit Blanche Toronto, and more. Their work is included in multiple private and public collections, including a public installation in St. Michael’s Hospital’s St. Michael’s Hospital’s St. Jamestown Health Center. Vettivelu has been invited to speak at Cornell University, University of Toronto, York University, University of British Columbia, the Canadian Parliamentary Standing Committee of Finance and Industry (INDU), alongside multiple grassroots community platforms.
Prayers for a Word (or a lack that builds the world) connects the material history of the spice trade with the psychic impact of European missionary work, exploring how frameworks of redemption and salvation have been used to ensure enthusiastic labour and unfettered access to resources. In this work, Vettivelu continues their investigation into how the language we use to understand ourselves is informed by the material conditions that surround us by connecting the artist studio, the installation, and a shrine dedicated to martyrdom.
The installation was first housed in the Visual Art Centre of Clarington for its history as a decommissioned factory. The building was constructed in 1805 for the processing of grits and barley. In 1976, the city of Bowmanville repurposed the building to become a site of cultural production. In collaboration with Nicolas Fleming and Andreas Buchwaldt, the gallery’s architecture is refigured into a factory that continually produces and destroys something that is simultaneously material and immaterial, public yet deeply private.