iThe Power Plant Contemporary Art GalleryHarbourfront
Owner of a Lonely Heart
An 80-minute looping film program by Haig Aivazian, Stephanie Comilang, Alia Farid, Hope Pearl Strickland and Yuyan Wang on labour, ecosystems and commodities.
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Preview: written before the show opened
A Filipina Emirati who performs with a K-pop cover group called the Pixies turns up in Stephanie Comilang's Search for Life II, a film about pearl diving. It is one of five recent films The Power Plant is showing back to back in its upstairs gallery, turned into a theatre for the season.
The program loops continuously for 80 minutes, so you can walk in at any point and stay until it comes back round. Each film follows a raw material: pearls, oil, electricity or plastic. In Alia Farid's Chibayish, young residents of the Iraqi marshes where the Tigris and Euphrates meet care for their water buffalo, swim and sing in a landscape polluted by the oil industry. Yuyan Wang's Green Grey Black Brown glues Jurassic-era plants to plastic mall greenery with a dark, oily slime. The films by Haig Aivazian and Hope Pearl Strickland haven't been named yet.
It opens on 24 October. Entry is free, as it is all year at The Power Plant.
Look for
The K-pop cameo
In Search for Life II, Fatima Khalid, known as Pats, a Filipina Emirati who sings with the K-pop cover group the Pixies, appears between scenes of pearl markets.
The returned pearl
Also in Comilang's film, the family of a Filipino diver paralyzed after surfacing too fast return a pearl to the ocean as an offering.
The water buffalo
In Chibayish, young residents of the southern Iraqi marshes call to and look after the water buffalo that roam the wetlands.
The slime
In Green Grey Black Brown, a dark, oily slime binds Jurassic-era flora to plastic plant decorations made for shopping malls.
Good for
- Cheap Culture
- Locals Who've Seen It All
- Rainy Days
About 80 min
Also at The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery
On now nearby
Nearby
Image credits
8
- Owner of a Lonely HeartCourtesy the artist.
- Returning to Ourselves: Rebecca Baird and Kenny Alvin Baird—A Retrospective of Art and Design by Cree Métis SiblingsPhoto by Luca Dichio
- Michael Massie: now and thenCourtesy of Fehely Fine Arts, photo by Renzo Fernandez
- body — mind — distanceCourtesy of Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography
- The Power Plant Contemporary Art GalleryCanmenwalker / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0
- Ontario Science Centre (Harbourfront Centre interim location)Mark Bradshaw, CC BY 3.0
- Toronto Railway MuseumCan Pac Swire / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0
- Hockey Hall of FameJK Liu / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0