Operation Desert, Windsor, Ontario

Build Me Up/Tear Me Down: Provisional Structures and Contested Zones includes the work of twelve international and Canadian artists who examine the city as a constantly changing arena of architectural and social activity. Buildings seem so permanent that we often forget that they are really temporary structures, held together by social, political, and cultural activities.

From photographs of trailers by Windsor-based photographer Brenda Francis Pelkey to the breathtaking image of the World Trade Centre disaster by New York artist Carolee Schneemann, this exhibition provides a range of perspectives on the ephemeral nature of the built environment. Several artists, including Vienna-based Sabine Bitter and Helmut Weber and Helge Mooshammer and Peter Mörtenböck from the UK, came to Windsor earlier in the year to create new work about our region. Other artists, including William Christenberry, who is from Washington D.C., and the mysterious Object Orange, a Detroit collective, photograph abandoned buildings in various states of decay. Botto and Bruno, from Turin, Italy, and Vancouver’s Jayce Salloum, examine the provisional structures of street culture, disaffected youth, and the homeless.