Abstract

This study investigates a transnational walking art practice known as GalleryGardi applied in local engagements, an event of being-with entanglements of body-object-space in meshwork connections. This inquiry is focused on how embodied knowledge forms within this pedagogical event that takes place in the context of galleries and museums. Through embodied experimentation, a corresponding relation is formed among body-object-space as an event of being-with, opening a creative space to embrace the unknown, the unpredictable, and the might-be-possible—both ontologically and epistemologically—in our dynamic socio-material encounters. The meshwork thinking in this study allows for the entanglement of theory-methodology-practice in a way that no single thread of the study is given precedence over another; threads (textual and visual) are knotted together to create a comprehensive expression referred to as GalleryGardi, constituting an event of being-with. Adopting meshwork thinking, the methodological movements of this study intersect with an arts-based research approach to community-based participatory practice, informed by walking and visual ethnographies. This dissertation addresses the significance of affective moments in walking, embodied experiences, co-conservations, being a community, vernacularity, and attentionally of body-object-space correspondence through a co-creative doing-making-meaning.
Inspired by eight weeks of walking in Montreal's art museums and galleries, this thesis is structured as a series of threads of inquiry, each of which serves as movements of our walks, encounters, and moments of exploration and intuition. This inquiry reveals GalleryGardi’s potential to be adopted as a transnational art practice and of its capacity for being-with those who collaborate and correspond, in which ethics of care are activated, not only for ourselves, but for others in proximity. Such practice allows us to attune to the relationality of our bodies with artworks and space of galleries and museums toward a human-non-human entanglement. The transnational movement of this artful practice from its origin in Tehran, Iran to Montreal’s art scenes opens possibilities for investigating the pedagogical and educational capacities of the public space of museums and galleries in an alternate way, grounded in trans- practices: that is, respectful of diversity in language, race, gender, and ethnic backgrounds.