Trotter & Sholer and The New Other (Toronto) are pleased to present Between standing and moving, an exhibition by Jaspal Birdi. This is Birdi’s first solo exhibition in New York City.

Birdi’s work explores the tension of liminality. The in-between spaces can be exciting to inhabit but they can also hold disquiet. Birdi’s process itself occupies a transitional space. She uses technology to work in and between the mediums of photography and painting. The results are images that are thoroughly investigated and layered and directed at a fuller sense of truth.

Birdi’s process begins with digital photography. She prints her images with a laser printer she has physically altered to spontaneously distort the images and produce them with the texture and grain which appear like handmade drawings or paintings. These images are scanned, enlarged, and photo-transferred by hand onto metallic emergency blankets. Finally, she completes her tapestries by intervening with paint. Each step in this process opens Birdi up to chance, error, and discovery. She references Susan Sontag who suggested, “Photography implies that we know about the world if we accept it as the camera records it. But this is the opposite of understanding, which starts from not accepting the world as it looks” (On photography pg. 23). Birdi allows her camera to record the world, but she knows there is more to discover within the images.

Between standing and moving, considers water specifcally as a site of transformation and connection. Water is a free fowing life source, but it also often serves as a boundary. Birdi’s parents crossed oceans to immigrate to Canada in the late seventies. Born in Toronto, her own life navigated the realities of occupying both sides of a threshold. Ties between cultures and countries often feel fuid. Birdi’s work captures that mercurial reality as she explores experiences and images recalling water in her home country of Canada, as a temporary resident in Italy, and a visitor in the United States.

Between standing and moving will be on view September 12th through October 26th, 2024 at 168 Suffolk Street.

Jaspal Birdi (B.1988, Toronto) combines photography and painting by experimenting with technology. Birdi completed a BFA at OCAD University 2010, a Museum Internship at The Peggy Guggenheim Collection 2011, and a Master of Arts Management from Istituto Europeo di Design, 2013. Her works have earned recognition from the Ontario Arts Council and Canada Council for the Arts, as well as several awards, including the 2013 Arte Laguna Solo Exhibition Prize, the 2017/18 Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa (BLM) Artist Residency, BLM Stonefy Art Award, the 2020/21 Fondazione Culturale San Fedele Visual Arts Fellowship and Martini International Award. In 2020 Birdi presented a solo exhibition supported by the RBC Foundation Emerging Artist Residency at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery. In 2022, she had a solo show at the Women’s Art Association of Canada, Toronto. For Vancouver’s 2023 Capture Photography Festival, Birdi’s public artwork 11h02m was featured at the Canada Line Lansdowne Station, presented by Richmond Art Gallery. Birdi also presented Occhi Che Guardano Senza Vedere, a solo exhibition at Fondazione Vittorio Leonesio in Italy, 2024.