September 06 >
October 19 2024
At ELEKTRA Gallery
Tuesday – Saturday
12:00 – 5:00 pm
Free entrance
Opening
Friday, Sept. 6 at 5:00 pm
Event part of la Rentrée de Gaspé
Amr Elkafrawy & Jean-François Robin
Memories of the Future
Memories of the Future is a collection of works that unfolds a dreamlike and poetic environment, stemming from ruins of the past.
The main component of the exhibit is a film that spans five chapters, accompanied by a series of sculptures. Through a preponderant strategy of inversion of time, Memories of the Future suggests a new look at the imaginary of the future in the hope of taming our own faculty of temporal intervention. By looking at the future as if it has already passed, this project shows oneiric future landscapes that could have or might be existing.
Photo credit: Amr Elkafrawy & Jean-François Robin
Amr Elkafrawy
Born in Cairo in 1980, currently based in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal, Canada. Elkafrawy graduated in 2003 from a Bachelor of Fine Arts, Painting major from the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Helwan (Cairo, Egypt). In 2021 he received his MFA from Concordia University in print-Media. Elkafrawy is involved in different art areas, such as Graphic Design, printing, drawing, painting, and illustration.
Amr Elkafrawy works on the concept of urbanism and its relationship with collective memory and investigates the aesthetics of landscapes. His artwork covers cities and urban sprawls due to political and social events, and the impact cities have on their residents. Elkafrawy's artwork significantly uses photography as a visual medium that can be used freely; it can be adjusted, added to, or removed from. His practices involve photography, printing, drawing, water coloring, and experimentation with paper and large-scale images.
Jean-François Robin
Jean-François Robin is a Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal-based intermedia artist. He completed his Bachelor’s Degree in Art & Technology at Aalborg Universitet (Aalborg, Denmark), before pursuing his art career in France and later in Canada. Awarded a Merit Scholarship from the faculty of Fine Arts at Concordia University (Montreal, Canada), he graduated with a MFA in Intermedia Arts in 2021.
By relying on digital collage, 3D printing and photogrammetry techniques, his work centers around the translation between material and digital matter, with a particular attention for what resists the translative act, the untranslatable, but also what is transformed and disfigured as a result of this same act.
On a more conceptual and ideological level, Robin is concerned with the manifold temporalities embedded in translations—from digital to material and conversely from material to digital—and the renewed sense of space it might bring about for both humans and more-than-humans.
Installation with video (23 min 09 seconds, 5 chapters), ceramic, aluminium, 3D prints, sand.
Original Idea
Amr Elkafrawy & Jean-François Robin
Concept Art
Amr Elkafrawy
Art Direction, Screenwriting, Cinematography, 3D Conception, Poetry
Jean-François Robin
Original music and Sound design
Emilie Roby
Sculpture
Amr Elkafrawy & Jean-François Robin
Voice Actors
Japanese, Ai Ikeda
Korean, Ahreum Lee
French, Jean-François Robin
Arabic, Amr Elkafrawy
English, Eric Tschaeppeler
Special thanks
Medrar team for their support of this project
The one and only Ahmed Mussa for his essential additions to the statue
Joëlle Dubé, for her assistance in drafting the writings
Oboro for supporting Emilie Roby
Concordia University for offering their recording lab
Videograph for their support