The Power Plant

EXHIBITION DESCRIPTION

Swiss-Haitian artist Sasha Huber uses performance, photography, and film, among other media, to investigate colonial residues left in the environment. Her projects conceive of natural spaces—mountains, lakes, glaciers, forests, and craters—as contested territories, highlighting the ways in which history is imprinted onto the landscape through acts of remembrance, including memorialization through naming and the erection of monuments. The exhibition at The Power Plant, Huber’s first solo show in North America, will feature over a decade’s worth of work prompted by the cultural and political activist campaign “Demounting Louis Agassiz,” which seeks to redress the racist legacy of the Swiss- born naturalist and glaciologist Louis Agassiz (1807–1873). Huber’s artworks thus challenge the terms by which we remember, asking not only who and what we memorialize, but also, and more importantly, how we do so.

YOU NAME IT is initiated, organized, and circulated by The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto, Canada, in collaboration with Kunstinstituut Melly, Rotterdam, Netherlands; Autograph ABP, London, United Kingdom; and Turku Museum, Finland.

Sasha Huber is a Swiss-Haitian artist who lives and works in Helsinki, Finland. In her lens and performance-based practice, Huber addresses the politics of memory and belonging, particularly in relation to colonial residue left in the environment. Her major solo exhibition YOU NAME IT was presented at Kunstinstituut Melly, Rotterdam (2021); and it will travel to The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto (2022);

Autograph, London (2022); and Turku Art Museum (2023). She has participated in international exhibitions, including the 56th Venice Biennale (2015); 19th Biennale of Sydney (2014); and 29th São Paulo Biennial (2010). Huber is completing her PhD studies at the Department of Art and Media at the Zurich University of the Arts, and she holds an MA from the University of Art and Design Helsinki.

The artist would like to acknowledge Arts Promotion Centre Finland for their support of her work.