Screening of short films by Alisi Telengut with premiere of Materia, 2025
On Friday, Nov. 7, please join The Joan and Martin Goldfarb Gallery for the premiere of Materia, 2025, a newly commissioned short film by Alisi Telengut as part of the Gallery’s digital art program. The screening will also include short films by Telengut, a Tiohtià:ke/Montréal- and Berlin-based filmmaker and artist, that explore human-nature relations, endangered languages, animistic beliefs, shamanic rituals in Mongolia and Siberia, and Indigenous knowledge.
The screenings will be followed by a conversation with the artist and Clara Halpern
Project info:
For Materia, with macro lens and small handheld digital microscope in hand, Telengut explores found objects and her local surroundings to enter a visual territory ordinary cinematography does not usually reach. She also incorporates images of skin and hair juxtaposed with shots of stones, revealing shared material qualities between bodies and landscapes and the interconnection between human and geological history.
Telengut writes, “at a macro scale, the familiar suddenly becomes topographical, the ridges on a small stone catch light like folded metal. Pushing further into the microscopic realm exposes even richer textures that are invisible to the naked eye yet carry the material ‘fingerprints’ of each medium.”
Choosing to work with a portable, low-tech setup as opposed to the calibrated optics of a biology lab, Telengut’s visual tools preserve a slight roughness, collapsing the distance between scientific observation and artistic image-making. She explains that “the macro lens offers cinematic intimacy, while the microscope pushes beyond the limits of human vision, turning ordinary objects into abstract terrain. Together they blur the boundary between factual detail and poetic interpretation.” Through this process, the artist creates a frame for herself and for the viewer to see and feel the material world anew.
Alongside Materia, the screening includes five other short films by Telengut focused on human-nature relations. The film The Fourfold, 2020, focuses on animistic beliefs and shamanic rituals in Mongolia and Siberia, and the reclamation of animism for the health of the planet and non-human elements. This film has a Toronto connection, as Telengut animated parts of it during her residency at TAIS (Toronto Animated Image Society). Also included is her 2023 film Baigal Nuur–Lake Baikal, where the formation of Lake Baikal in Siberia is reimagined with hand-painted and found objects in stop-motion animation depicting stars, the sun, volcanoes, rocks, plants, and animals. The film also features the voice of Marina Dorzhieva, an Indigenous Buryat woman from the Lake Baikal area speaking in Buryat, an endangered Mongolian dialect.
Following the screening curator Clara Halpern will engage Telengut in a conversation about the artist’s unique process and approach to filmmaking.
Materia is the third commission in The Goldfarb Gallery’s digital art program stream, which supports born-digital and internet art commissions and presentations. Materia will be available for screening on The Goldfarb Gallery’s website as of November 8, 2025.
Find out more about the project through its page on the The Goldfarb Gallery website.
Alisi Telengut is a Canadian artist and filmmaker of Mongolian roots. Her practice has included handmade painterly animated films created frame by frame under the camera. Her work has been screened and exhibited internationally, in contexts that include the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, USA; the Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art; the Sundance Film Festival; TIFF and TIFF Canada’s Top Ten; Annecy International Animation Festival, France; Videonale X, Germany; Ostrale Biennale, Germany; Anthology Film Archives, USA; CICA Museum, South Korea; UNESCO World Heritage Site Zollverein, Germany; Images Festival; and Image Forum, Japan; among others. Telengut is currently an assistant professor in film animation at Concordia University in Montréal.
Alisi Telengut’s project is curated by Clara Halpern, assistant curator, exhibitions, and commissioned by The Goldfarb Gallery, with technical support from Michael Maranda, assistant curator, publications, and Jonah Kamphorst. Sound design by Christian Obermaier.
The Joan and Martin Goldfarb Gallery of York University is a socially minded not-for-profit contemporary art gallery that is a space for the creation and appreciation of art and culture. It is a supported Unit of York University within the President’s Division. We are externally funded as a public art gallery through the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the Toronto Arts Council, local and international foundations, embassies, and our membership who support our programs.
Location & Accessibility
The Goldfarb Gallery is located at York University, Toronto, at 83a York Boulevard. It is a one-storey wheelchair accessible building only 30 meters from the TTC York University subway stop on line 1 where there is also a Wheel-Trans stop. There is pay street parking on Fine Arts Road and at the Student Services Parking Garage (84 James Gillies Street).
The Goldfarb Gallery
83a York Boulevard
Toronto, ON M7A 2C5
Gallery Hours
Tuesday – Saturday, 12 – 5 pm
Always free
For more information about the exhibitions, please visit our website: https://thegoldfarbgallery.ca/
For media inquiries and accommodations, please email: TheGoldfarbGallery@yorku.ca
Image caption/credit: Alisi Telengut, still from Materia, 2025.
