Question d’adaptation, Koffler Gallery, Toronto, Ontario (Canada) 2018

At the Koffler Gallery’s invitation, Torres creates a site-specific sculptural installation focused on three notions central to the experience of migration: camouflage, reflection and construction. Attempting to blend into the new cultural milieu and to mirror social conventions is a familiar process to newcomers. As assimilation indelibly affects one’s sense of identity, layers of individuality risk being chipped away to near invisibility, or reconfigured and rebuilt into ever more complex self-expression.

Metaphorically exploring the adaptation strategies and fluid reinvention of immigrant identity, Torres transforms the exhibition space through material interventions, building an immersive setting that disrupts visitors’ expectations. The installation unfolds as an all-encompassing, seemingly endless construction that reflects the state of precariousness and perpetual change intrinsic to the immigrant condition. Cultivating the ways in which coexisting, unplanned elements can modify each other to generate constantly evolving environments, Torres’ work enables us to re-examine how we inhabit and adjust to our surroundings.

Curator : Mona Filip

http://kofflerarts.org/exhibitions/2018/03/26/jose-luis-torres-question-dadaptation/