“Do you even know what you want to want?” Jacob takes us on a looping and circuitous path through self-care and empowerment rhetoric. “Own it!” “You know you want it.” “I’m over it—you do you.” With a text-to-speech device twisting these words to the point of their collapse, Jacob at once celebrates their capacity to inspire, and exposes their vacuity. “Artists-in-Presidents” is initiated by Constance Hockaday, curated by Christine Shaw, and commissioned by The Blackwood (University of Toronto Mississauga). Podcast production by Vocal Fry. Transmissions are released every Friday from August 6–December 17, 2021. To view the portrait gallery, access ASL videos and transcripts, and for additional information about the project, visit www.artistsinpresidents.com and www.blackwoodgallery.ca. Based in Toronto, Luis Jacob is an artist whose work destabilizes conventions of viewing and invites collisions of meaning. Jacob has achieved an international reputation, with his work exhibited at the Museum der Moderne Salzburg (2019); Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart (2019); the Toronto Biennial of Art (2019); Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (2018); Museion, Bolzano, Italy (2017); La Biennale de Montréal (2016); Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York (2015); Taipei Biennial 2012; Generali Foundation, Vienna (2011); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2010); Hamburg Kunstverein, the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery (both 2008); and Documenta12, Kassel (2007). In 2016 he curated the exhibition Form Follows Fiction: Art and Artists in Toronto at the Art Museum at the University of Toronto, with a catalogue co-published with Black Dog Press in 2020. Photo: Miguel Jacob

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“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.

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