Frames
Maya Stewart Pathak

April 12 and April 13, 2024

Both performances will begin at 9 PM sharp.

In Maya Stewart Pathak’s performance, Frames, the artist continues her explorations of ephemerality through original musical compositions, sculptural installation and reiki healing. 

A 6.5 ft x 6.5 ft necklace of delicate silver chain outlines a performance area, arranged with five hand-crafted silver rings, one in each corner and one forming a clasp. Each ring is threading into the whole, able to easily slide, shift, or manipulate the shape and dimensions, flirting with change. In numerology, five stands for transformation or malleability. As a thermal and electrical conductor, silver acts as a symbol of energy transfer. It is also highly malleable and sensitive, slowly tarnishing. As silver reflects light, its own materiality diminishes; luster, or its relational aspect, takes the fore.

Frames parallels the hypnotic stupor of social media, conjuring a rapturous, meditative presence. Visitors witness a private engagement with self that apes our obsession with our own reflected subjectivity. Stewart Pathak’s set includes a lullaby-like electronic piece paired with cyclical, ceremonial hand motions facing a mirror, followed by seven minimalist pop songs. In a silver dress, she performs vanity, or embodies an existential state where one constantly faces one’s own reflection. She also acts, like silver, as a channel, drawing on her reiki practice. Her pop songs engage with aspects of the self that are escapable, whether through the numinous, depicting a break-up, or tacitly holding multiple meanings. 

The mirror instantiates a tension between subject and object, blurring the audience's perspective, caught between voyeur and viewer. It also exaggerates space: the distance between her body and the mirror magnifies the distance between the performer and her audience. Stewart Pathak’s movement work evokes both the automatic and the ritualistic in a mesmerizing cadence. Here, the motor is not technological but spiritual; energy channeled through space.

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Maya Stewart Pathak (b. 1993, Toronto) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Montréal. She trained as a classical pianist at the Royal Conservatory of Music and began to release experimental pop songs in 2022. Her silversmithing practice has been supported by Canada Council for the Arts and is held in private collections in Montréal, Toronto, New York, Rome, London, and Northern Ireland. Frames will be Stewart Pathak’s first presentation in the United States.