A conversation between Kelly Jazvac and Juan Ortiz-Apuy on the role of sustainability in their artwork, teaching practices and the field of Sculpture
About Kelly Jazvac
Kelly Jazvac (b. Hamilton, ON) works with plastic waste to probe the permanence of disposability. She often re-works found images from advertisements printed on plastic into new site-specific installations. She is also part of a SSHRC-funded plastic pollution research team called The Synthetic Collective, which includes scientists, artists and writers. She has upcoming exhibitions at MoMA (New York); Fierman Gallery (New York); The Musée D’Art Contemporain (Montréal), and Art Museum at the University of Toronto. Her recent exhibitions include the Eli and Edyth Broad Museum (East Lansing); Ujazdowski Castle CCA (Warsaw); and Fierman Gallery (New York). Her work has been written about in National Geographic, e-flux Journal, Hyperallergic, Art Forum, The New Yorker, Border Crossings, Canadian Art, C Magazine and The Brooklyn Rail. Her collaborative art/science research has been published in scientific journals including Nature Reviews, GSA Today, and Science of the Total Environment. She is based in Montreal, where she is an Associate Professor of Sculpture in the Department of Studio Arts at Concordia University.
About Juan Ortiz-Apuy
Juan Ortiz-Apuy is a Canadian-Costa Rican artist who has been living and working in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal since 2003. Ortiz-Apuy has a BFA from Concordia University (2008), a Post-Graduate Diploma from The Glasgow School of Art (2009), and an MFA from NSCAD University (2011).
His work has been exhibited across Canada and internationally in venues such as Les Abattoirs Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (France), IKEA Museum (Sweden), Pamflett (Norway), DHC/ART Fondation Phi pour l’art contemporain (Montreal), Owens Art Gallery (Sackville), Carleton University Art Gallery (Ottawa), MOMENTA Biennale de l’image (Montreal), Quebec City Biennial: Manif d’art 7 (Québec), Truck Contemporary Art (Calgary), Museum London (London), Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography (Toronto), VOX Centre de l’image Contemporaine (Montreal), and The MacLaren Arts Centre (Barrie).
His work has been awarded numerous grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and Le Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, and has been reviewed in various publications such as Canadian Art, MOMUS, esse arts opinions, The Gazette (Montreal), Le Devoir (Montreal), and Public Parking.
Ortiz-Apuy has completed several artist-in-residence programs, most notably at The Vermont Studio Center (USA), The Frans Masereel Centre (Belgium), and the Guldagergaard International Ceramic Research Center (Denmark).
