Noting the vulnerable and capricious reciprocity between bodies and environments, Lotus L. Kang produced the newly commissioned Receiver Transmitter (Butterfly), which serves as both a permeable container of resilient and enduring objects and materials from natural and industrial sources, and a poignant commentary on their combinative instability and fragility.  The work’s scrupulously included objects and auras, though seemingly mundane, invoke contemplation and reflection, while Kang skillfully blends organic forms with architectural elements to explore states of interiority, inviting introspection and non-linear dialogue. Memory is a recurring theme in Kang’s work, as she delves into the layers of personal and shared recollections that shape our identities. The poetic constellation of items she collected and  assembled in the structure appear both rooted and unrooted in their familiarity, invoking rumination on “home”—where is home? Where is belonging? With their apparition-like qualities, materials that contain the  residue of our environments, our movements, and our relationships to space–both transient and enduring– fluctuate between that which is fixed in meaning and that which is malleable as a referent. Through her imagery, Kang captures fleeting moments frozen in time, weaving together fragmented memories to create narratives that resonate on a visceral level. The work becomes a visual diary, documenting the passage of time and the ebb and flow of our resoluteness.

Greater Toronto Art 2024 (GTA24) is the second edition of MOCA Toronto’s recurring triennial exhibition, which was conceived in 2021 to look more closely and consistently at artistic practices with a connection to the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). Featuring a constellation of twenty-five intergenerational artists, duos, and collectives, GTA24 looks back as much as it looks forward. The exhibition presents work made between the 1960s and the present, allowing the comingling of art created in different decades to provide new ways of understanding the current moment and imagining the future.

Across the museum’s three floors—and in an energetic series of live programmes and screenings—the exhibition features fifteen newly commissioned presentations, performances, and events, furthering MOCA’s commitment to supporting artists in the development of new work and ideas. Thinking through the formation and designation of the Greater Toronto Area, GTA24 considers the arbitrary lines drawn to create maps, the ambiguities of an ever-widening geographic designation, and the precarity that arises for those displaced by rapid growth and expansion. These conditions create a state of otherness, and GTA24 reflects on the artistic strategies of working with, on, and against dominant cultural forms. Within this context, the exhibition emphasizes the crucial roles artistic language plays in developing more sustainable and caring ways of living together, and in building solidarity.