IARA FREIBERG
WHERE I’M WAITING FROM
Exhibition
Koffler Gallery Off-Site at Jack Layton Ferry Terminal, 2013
Photo documentation by Toni Hafkenscheid
Brazilian artist Iara Freiberg creates site-specific interventions that explore the ways in which urban spaces are used, playing with perceptions of the built environment. Intimately entwined with the structures they occupy, her spatial drawings rely on the rigors of geometry, revealing harmonious or opposing tensions within the architecture and soliciting the viewer’s awareness. In 2013, Freiberg created where I’m waiting from, her first commissioned work in Canada, engaging with one of Toronto’s main civic portals – the Jack Layton Ferry Terminal.
Creating a monumental yet minimalist vinyl drawing that responds to the complex geometry of the site, Freiberg enables a new way of looking at this built structure, generating dialogue about the public and private places we dwell in and navigate. where I’m waiting from proposes an outsider’s gaze encountering the peculiarities of the Terminal’s architecture, highlighting structural harmonies and tensions that become evident only when one is situated within the space.
The intervention overlays a unifying structuring principle across the existing architecture by imagining an incision that virtually traverses the entire compound. Reacting to each section of the site with its specific elements, the conceived incision exposes a rhythm integrated to the play of crossing angles and plunging perspectives. The colour yellow marks the poured concrete surface as a beam of light that intersects the Ferry Terminal, tracing a luminous presence and transforming the location into a beacon on the city’s shore.
The intervention overlays a unifying structuring principle across the existing architecture by imagining an incision that virtually traverses the entire compound. Reacting to each section of the site with its specific elements, the conceived incision exposes a rhythm integrated to the play of crossing angles and plunging perspectives. The colour yellow marks the poured concrete surface as a beam of light that intersects the Ferry Terminal, tracing a luminous presence and transforming the location into a beacon on the city’s shore.
Artist Info
Iara Freiberg is a Brazilian/Argentinean artist, born in 1977 in São Paulo, Brazil. She earned a degree in Fine Arts from the University of São Paulo in 2003 and has since participated in solo and group exhibitions as well as artist residencies in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, England, South Africa, and Uruguay. In recent years, Freiberg’s work has focused on site-specific architectural interventions in public and private spaces, with participations in unconventional exhibitions and independent projects. She has received the Acquisition Prize at the 32nd Salão de Arte Contemporânea de Santo André, São Paulo, Brazil in 2004 and the Prize Visualidade Nascente at the 13th Projeto Nascente, University of São Paulo, Brazil in 2003.
