This Is The Artists’ Object(ive): The Conceptual Display of The Object, The Thing, and Asserting Subjectivity Through The Arts

ABSTRACT This Is The Artists Object(ive): The Conceptual Display of The Object, The Thing, and Asserting Subjectivity Through The Arts is a thesis exhibition and curatorial paper that considers the ways in which personal and collective memory is determined through the presentation and representation of everyday objects, and the ways in which objects can be separated from their utilitarian purpose and re-contextualized to reflect conditions of subjectivity in the gallery space. The exhibition presents the work of three Toronto-based, artists, Esmaa Mohamoud, Erin Vincent, and Dana Prieto, all of whom display personal, and everyday objects in order to reflect on social issues including race, identity politics, colonial exploitation, and stigma associated with mental health. The artists make use of objects such as - tea cups, wall paper, basket-ball nets, pillows, hammers, etc - in order to move beyond ethnographic presentation, and to forward critiques of nationalism, idealization, and identity, which act as a type of aesthetic de-pathologization; in other words, the ways in which art can undermine an adherence to hegemonic determinations of subject-hood