Featuring the following artists:

Can Altay, Matilda Aslizadeh, Carl Beam, Dineo Seshee Bopape, Awol Erizku, Meschac Gaba, Kendell Geers, Barbara Kruger, Nikolaj Bendix Skyum Larsen, Tuan Andrew Nguyen, Jeneen Frei Njootli, Rajni Perera, Jeremy Shaw, Nep Sidhu, Maya Stovall, Tim Whiten

For MOCA’s international opening, we explore the beliefs and systems that shape our values and behaviours, touching upon some of the fundamental issues of our times.

This group exhibition opens with Kendell Geers’s neon >BE:LIE:VE, 2002, which can be found on Floor 1. With a simple gesture, the three middle letters are made distinct and Geers proposes the irony that belief potentially contains a lie. The exhibition continues across Floors 2 and 3 with more than 20 works by artists from around the world.

BELIEVE includes new textile installations by Toronto-based Nep Sidhu, as well as a playable pinball machine on which he collaborated with another artist featured in the exhibition, Rajni Perera. Other works respond to the physical spaces of the building, such as a wall text by Barbara Kruger and Can Altay’s vinyl window treatments that shape our view of the neighbourhood and city outside. Several artists deal with spirituality and storytelling, including Dineo Seshee Bopape’s acknowledgement of our direct relationship with the earth, Jeneen Frei Njootli’s work with the ephemerality of imprinted bead patterns and Tim Whiten’s explorations of our imagination and consciousness.

In all, 16 artists provide perspectives on how we believe and perceive through a variety of media, materials and disciplines, including sculpture, video, installation, film, collage, printmaking, painting, photography, animation and performance.