Cassils: Movement

 The exhibition, Cassils: Movement exists in the interstices of performance, photography, sound, and light. The title references the sequential stages of a musical score, as well as social, political, physiological, and somatic movements. This exhibition includes a series of works that translate Human Measure (2021-ongoing), Cassils’ first work of contemporary dance, into an immersive installation. Consisting of the series of photographs, Human Measure Rorschach (2024); film installation, Movement (2024); and large-scale cyanotype, Human Measure (Developed) No. 2 (2021); the exhibition both documents the live performance while transforming it into distinct, interconnected artworks.

The film installation captures the live dance performance Human Measure created with choreographer Jasmine Albuquerque, set in a theatre that Cassils transforms into an analogue photography darkroom, lit by red safety lights. The dancers’ gestures interpret themes of self-actualization and empowerment against an antagonistic political backdrop where trans* people face severe discrimination, stigma and systemic inequality.

Projected above a pool of water, the film appears mirrored in an allusion to a Rorschach test. This psychological exam prompts interpretations of abstract, symmetrical ink blots revealing the desires and motives unconsciously held by a viewer; referenced in this context to indicate projections onto trans* subjecthood. This formal approach is echoed in the series of photographic works, Human Measure Rorschach, which consists of performance documentation that has been folded in on itself, creating abstractions of entangled limbs.

Cassils’ ongoing critical engagement with the work of twentieth-century artist Yves Klein is a central reference for the exhibition. A sonic reinterpretation of Klein’s 1949 Monotone Symphony is sung by trans* vocalists. Cassils’ cyanotype, Human Measure (Developed) No. 2, references Klein’s series of paintings, Anthropométries, in which he instructed women to dip their bodies in paint and press themselves onto a substrate. Each body print in the cyanotype reflects the movements present in the choreography and is produced using an analogue photographic process, reverberating the blue hue used by Klein while alchemizing his instrumentalization of female agency into an image of queer collectivity and self-determination.

Cassils: Movement is curated by Jacqueline Bell and Carol A. Stakenas and is organized and circulated by Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity.

Please note that the exhibition contains nudity and depictions of flashing lights which may not be suitable for people with photosensitive epilepsy or other light sensitivities.