Three professional Mississauga artists have founded a new artistic collective to support, promote, practice and create contemporary art in the city while pushing for a cultural revolution.
Ibrahim Rashid, Maha Mustafa and Narendra Pachkhede created mCUBE, which will hold its first meeting this Saturday. The idea is to get professional artists, or those working professionally in various artistic fields, to gather to ruminate on what can be done to shake up Mississauga.
"Artists have historically been at the forefront of defining what culture is," said Pachkhede. "When people get together, they talk and ideas are explored, exchanged and critiqued. The ideas may be foolish, or they may be absolutely brilliant, but they're being discussed."
The three artists, who have lived outside of Canada, believe Mississauga is the perfect city for such a movement. They think it's begging for a well-defined culture with a new emphasis on modern arts.
They said Mississauga held much more appeal to them than the much larger, and culturally prominent, Toronto.
"Toronto is an old story, a chapter closed," said Pachkhede. "Mississauga is a new city, a new development. There is nothing here, but so much that can be done. The point we're trying to make with mCUBE is that there is a tremendous opportunity to push the envelope. Right now, imagination is in short supply in Mississauga."
The group's upcoming meeting will feature a presentation on mCUBE, an introduction of the founding members and a screening of the Academy Award-winning film, Ryan (in honour of legendary Canadian animator Ryan Larkin, who died after a lengthy battle with lung cancer). The screening will be followed by discussion.
The group will also meet July 7 to screen films by the group's founders. Other meetings are scheduled for July 14 (presentation by a professional local artist), July 21 (contemporary literary practices and experiments in Mississauga) and July 28 (architecture and the city: exploring urban designs and contemporary practices).
Meetings begin at 6 p.m.
For information, e-mail mcube.artsalon@gmail.com.
cclay@mississauga.net