Tension seeks to create an organic textile installation to physically and conceptually connect the body to the space that it (un)occupies. This net-like structure will be made with pairs of pantyhose that will be extended throughout the space. The piece can be walked and experienced by visitors, embodying the tense—but still multilayered and strong—social formations and cultural relations involved in the construction of identity and place. It will interweave but also point at the constricted and delicate connections that (still) exist between the interior and he exterior, the private and the public, the personal and the social, the local and the global, the ethic and the aesthetic, the subjective and the objective, the feminine and the masculine, the past and the present, the body and the land. Considering what each one of us is weaving in our shared social fabric, it is an invitation to join in an important shared process of identity making, cultural claiming and social inclusion, reminding us that (dis)place and identity are inextricably bound to one another. Tension offers textile narratives that hold and are structured by the memories, experiences and places that shape us. This piece represents the embodiment of space, reconsidering the tense relation of our bodies to land, borders and boundaries, involving notions of belonging, memory and sense of place and displacement as central aspects of individual and collective identity.

Maria Ezcurra is an artist, educator, researcher and mother. Born in Argentina and raised in Mexico, she currently lives in Montreal. She has participated in numerous exhibits and public events worldwide, and has recently co-developed a participative art project with Latin American Immigrants living in Montreal for the MBAM. She obtained a PhD at Concordia University and has taught art in a number of universities and schools in Mexico and Canada over the past 15 years. Maria was the first Artists-in-Residence working at the Faculty of Education, in McGill University, where she currently coordinates several art initiatives. Her research interests include collaborative art practices, dress and identity, gender-based violence, memory, identity and immigration.