Shauna McCabe
The constructions of José Luis Torres evoke the prolonged ambiguity and estrangement inherent in experiences of immigration and exile. Repurposing found materials, the Quebec-based Argentinian artist transforms spaces with large-scale installations that offer possibilities to both see and engage familiar objects in new ways. Collecting and recontextualizing objects of daily life, his DIY architectures point less to home than to informal settlements, where sedentary spaces of stability associated with belonging give way to nomadic spaces of risk and vulnerability. For Torres, this geography of temporary territories offers insight into deterritorialization – the deep transformation of everyday cultural experiences compelled by the dislocation and relocation associated with cross-border movement and migration at both local and global scales.
Integrating aged and discarded furniture – doors, windows, mirrors, and chairs – sourced within the community to preserve their association with local ways of life, Torres uses strategies of reconstruction and assimilation deeply familiar to im/migrants as they shape and are reshaped by new territories. The very simple gesture of “making do” that informs the construction of this built environment belies the profound precariousness of relationships to home, to identity, and to bearings produced by immigration, as well as the essentially ephemeral intersections of object and human biographies through time and change.
Image detail: José Luis Torres, Temporary Territories (installation view), 2023, found furniture
Organized by the Art Gallery of Guelph with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. Partnership support from Circle Home Furniture Bank, an initiative of Danby Appliances, and ReStore, an initiative of Habitat for Humanity.
About the artist
José Luis Torres
Born in Argentina, José Luis Torres has lived and worked in Quebec since 2003. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in visual arts, a Master’s degree in sculpture, as well as training in architecture and in the integration of arts into architecture. His works have been the subject of numerous individual and collective exhibitions in Quebec, Canada, the United States, Europe and Asia. Recently, his works have been seen in various festivals and major cultural events, including the Festival international de jardins of the Jardins de Métis, the Biennale nationale de sculpture contemporaine in Trois-Rivières, CAFKA – Contemporary Art Forum Kitchener and Area, at the Symposium d’art contemporain in Baie-Saint-Paul, at the Art in the Open Festival in Charlottetown and at the Festival des Architectures Vives in Montpellier, France, as well as at international biennials in Europe and Asia. In 2019, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec awarded him the CALQ Prize – Work of the Year in Chaudière-Appalaches, and, in 2021, he was awarded the title of Personnalité Arts et Culture by the organization Culture Capitale-Nationale et Chaudière-Appalaches.
View More Exhibitions
exhibition
May 22.2025 / August 29.2025
Call for Artists: Art Gallery of Guelph’s 2025 Summer Exhibition
exhibition
May 3.2025 / May 8.2025
exhibition
April 24.2025 / April 29.2025
Through photography, Bahar Enshaeian unravels the intricate layers of memory, identity, and belonging. Rooted in personal experience, her work speaks to the complexities of migration, displacement, and the search for home.
exhibition
April 10.2025 / April 15.2025
What utility can we find in vestiges of the past? This question shapes Hal Fortin’s interdisciplinary practice and its distinct sculptural language, punctuated by humour, dream logic, and the rhythms of domestic labour.
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April 2.2025 / April 6.2025
At the heart of Stephanie Fortin’s practice is an ethical inquiry: is it necessary—or responsible—to aestheticize waste in the context of global exploitation and climate change?
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Contemporary Indigenous Artists at AGG
January 16.2025 / May 4.2025
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September 12.2024 / May 4.2025
Juxtaposing Susan Mogul’s 1997 video with a collection of quillboxes, this exhibition unifies both forms of expression through themes of women’s identity, family, relationships, and the quest for home.
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September 12.2024 / January 5.2025
Some kind of we brings together works that approach t4t sensibilities, emphasizing trans relationality, self-representation, cross-generational inheritance, desire, and love.
