How do we share space socially? Contemporary Calgary exhibit called Presence invites visitors to think about it

Calgary Herald

10-07-2025

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The final pieces that visitors to Contemporary Calgary's new exhibit, Presence, are two tables filled with the photography of Jayce Salloum.
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The artist is one of seven participating in the exhibit, but his artwork is the first and last pieces visitors will see. One table offers a collection of dozens of colourful photographs of flowers, presumably from around the world. The next one is full of old tanks and other armaments left behind in war zones such as Afghanistan. Most are abandoned, some have been left in pieces. Some look like they are about to be enveloped back into the desert.
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At first blush, the two series seem to have little in common.
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'These are tanks from various zones of conflict that he has been to,' she adds about the second collection. 'It depends on which way you are looking at it. Are they destructive or are they protective? It's the same with the flowers. They last for only so long, so there is a sense of mortality but also beauty.'
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Salloum did not attend last week's opening of Presence because he is currently in Gaza. But he has provided hundreds of photographs with a wide array of themes that are grouped together on walls throughout the exhibit. They are from his series location/dis-location(s): gleaning spaces/not the way things ought to be. It also includes sculptures and video. Born in British Columbia, Salloum is the grandson of Syrian/Lebanese immigrants.
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His contribution to Presence comes with a 28-page booklet that names and, in some cases, offers explanations for the sprawling body of work.
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'The way I like to read his work is part documentarian, part anthropologist,' says Anand, a senior curator at Contemporary Calgary who first began thinking of the concepts Presence two years ago. 'This work is called location/dis-location and is a project that started during COVID and is an ongoing series.'
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The different walls have loose themes. One is based on Indigenous history and includes images of residential schools. Another wall covers human habitation, offering images of construction and deconstruction that explore human impact on the environment.
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The images run the gamut. They are photos of buildings that have crumbled to rubble. They are images of cluttered marketplaces, nature, the burned earth of a freshly cleared forest in Mexico, an emptied fountain in Taiwan, an encampment in Hawaii where the homeless had recently been evicted, a butterfly caught in a spider's web and angry pink bird at Vancouver's Bloedel Conservatory.