Jeune tête d’affiche 2022-2023
OK Pedersen
Paper Monuments is a series of 7 photographic images depicting architectural renderings of memory hyperspace. These drawings are based on real places that are now only accessible in the artist's mind—either because they are actually gone or simply out of reach. The architectural forms are drawn by hand on the same sheet of mylar, photographed, and then erased. Each new structure is drawn over the ghostly erasure of the last. Thus, as the series progresses, faint traces of previous renderings are still visible within each new image. By dramatizing the transformation of a single surface, the series emphasizes the muddied, ongoing oscillation between psychic forms and their physical realities, and the way memories turn over as they play back in the mind’s eye. The first image in the series is pictured here.
OK Pedersen (b.1993 Chicago) is a first generation Middle Eastern-American now living and working in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal. She witnesses the world through the kaleidoscopic powers of language—its pendulum of potency and ineptitude. Her work circles around modern myth, mainstream media, and the architecture of memory, as a way to address the cyclical nature of existence. Her practice is dedicated to exploring the mediating mechanisms, both visible and invisible, that structure our means of communication and intersubjective exchange. OK Pedersen completed her MFA at Concordia University in 2022.
Jeune tête d’affiche contest
OK Pedersen is the recipient of the 2022-2023 Jeune tête d’affiche contest. This annual contest, dedicated to image-based practices, is open to students of Canadian universities and/or Canadian students abroad who are currently completing a Graduate degree program in Fine Arts.
The selected artist will have their image featured in Dazibao’s programming pamphlet and receive an award in the amount of $500. This brochure benefits from a large distribution locally, nationally and internationally, thus giving the selected image to considerable exposure.
Past recipients
© Jordan Blackburn, Now and Then (2020).
(Click on the image to view previous posters)
Jordan Blackburn (2021-2022) / John Boyle-Singfield (2020-2021) / Zinnia Naqvi (2019-2020) / Ralitsa Doncheva (2018-2019) / Emma-Kate Guimond (2017-2018) / Simon Belleau (2016-2017) / Celia Perrin Sidarous (2015-2016) / Didier Morelli (2014-2015) / Rosika Desnoyers (2013-2014) / Alex Kisilevich (2011-2012) / Juan Ortiz-Apuy (2010-2011) / Karen Zalamea (2009-2010) / Atom Deguire (2008-2009)
Dazibao thanks the artist for his generous collaboration as well as its advisory programming committee for its support.
Dazibao receives financial support from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Conseil des arts de Montréal, the Ministère de la Culture et des Communications and the Ville de Montréal.
Dazibao acknowledges that we are located on unceded territory of the Kanien'kehá: ka Nation and that Tiohtiá: ke / Montreal is historically known as a gathering place for many First Nations, and today, is home to a diverse population of Indigenous as well as other peoples.