Reflecting on Time and the Current State

of Humanity: A Preface to The Continuum

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By Sylvie Stojanovski 

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I’m sitting in my room looking out at the empty street outside, thinking of what brought humanity to this particular moment. Nobody could have predicted three weeks ago that our lives would be like this—boiled down to a series of monotonous tasks needed to survive. COVID-19 robbed what many of us thought were absolutes—human contact, space—leaving a gaping void where privilege once lived.  

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The University of Toronto Scarborough’s D-Level online studio exhibition, The Continuum, particularly speaks to this uncertain moment in time. Though most of the works were not conceptualized in quarantine, their themes and messages prompt us to ask salient questions about the current state of humanity, and our relationship to time. Who are we as individuals, and as a collective? What is our history? Where do we need to go from here? 

 

The Continuum, which features the work of 20 undergraduate students, reminds us that the world is continuously shifting and changing. The only constant we have is the knowledge that there is a continuum, and our experiences fall somewhere along it. Not every part of the continuum is beautiful. There are moments of complete joy, like in Vivian Li’s Uncertain Memories, and moments defined by trauma, loss and grief, like in Ling Zhang’s Double-Sided. 

 

Many of the works in this show are inherently political, and intensely intimate—from Beenish Shahab’s Flying While Muslim to Shohaila Azimi’s Faded Away 2020. The sculptures, paintings, drawings, photographs, and videos in this show urge us to reflect on the world we have been living in, and compel us to make a change.

 

The artists invite you to experience the dialectic collectivity present in their work of anxiety and calm, longing and memory, and flight and survival. Sit, reflect, and see the world through this particular moment in The Continuum.