Reorientations to Care
Marianne van Silfhout Gallery, St. Lawrence College, Brockville, Ontario. This project was supported by the Alberta Foundations for the Arts.
Enacting Forms
What could emerge from the experience of using all my senses to engage with items that have seemingly lost their purpose? Might life exist in the torn edges of a chair or emerge in the pit of my stomach? How can an object made for a fleeting purpose, never just go away? How can the ongoing activity of these life-forms be made visible in the human psyche? Once visible, what impact might that have?
What has emerged from this project is not only the recognition and embodiment of throwaway objects as active agents within our domestic and natural spaces, but also within our bodies, our memories, and all non-physical parts of our being. This work intends to engage in dialogue with objects in order to trouble and make visible some intricacies of late capitalism and anthropocentrism in a time of reemergence. This work has been supported by research funding from the University of Calgary.
What could emerge from the experience of using all my senses to engage with items that have seemingly lost their purpose? Might life exist in the torn edges of a chair or emerge in the pit of my stomach? How can an object made for a fleeting purpose, never just go away? How can the ongoing activity of these life-forms be made visible in the human psyche? Once visible, what impact might that have?
What has emerged from this project is not only the recognition and embodiment of throwaway objects as active agents within our domestic and natural spaces, but also within our bodies, our memories, and all non-physical parts of our being. This work intends to engage in dialogue with objects in order to trouble and make visible some intricacies of late capitalism and anthropocentrism in a time of reemergence. This work has been supported by research funding from the University of Calgary.
Looking Down
How does the coping mechanism of “looking down”, shape the way that one understands the public spaces in which they move? How is gender-based violence analogous and interrelated to environmental crises and how can this relationship be made visible through print media? What practices of coping and/or care can emerge from trauma and how can they affect the spaces we occupy? Through this work, I explore how joy and care can be coping strategies, which when personally exercised, can allow for survival through individual trauma, and when applied to the environment, can be frameworks to, at best, aid in the crisis we are in, and at worst, cope with being in the end-times. This work has been supported by research funding from the University of Calgary.
How does the coping mechanism of “looking down”, shape the way that one understands the public spaces in which they move? How is gender-based violence analogous and interrelated to environmental crises and how can this relationship be made visible through print media? What practices of coping and/or care can emerge from trauma and how can they affect the spaces we occupy? Through this work, I explore how joy and care can be coping strategies, which when personally exercised, can allow for survival through individual trauma, and when applied to the environment, can be frameworks to, at best, aid in the crisis we are in, and at worst, cope with being in the end-times. This work has been supported by research funding from the University of Calgary.
Young Woman
What can I come to know about my relationship with public spaces by documenting my experiences moving through them? How can stereotypical perceptions of young womanhood be problematized through the production and presentation of print-based works? How can recognizable objects and visual languages embody the effects of gender-based violence? What can it look like to endure with this trauma?
Considering shared assumptions of the socially constructed life-phase of young womanhood, the Young Woman/ Young Lady project explores my embodied experience negotiating the perception of Young Womanhood while enduring violence. Responding to my experiences with public and private gender-based violence, this work is derived from an archive I developed throughout 2016 and 2017. This work has been supported by research funding from the University of Calgary and Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador.
What can I come to know about my relationship with public spaces by documenting my experiences moving through them? How can stereotypical perceptions of young womanhood be problematized through the production and presentation of print-based works? How can recognizable objects and visual languages embody the effects of gender-based violence? What can it look like to endure with this trauma?
Considering shared assumptions of the socially constructed life-phase of young womanhood, the Young Woman/ Young Lady project explores my embodied experience negotiating the perception of Young Womanhood while enduring violence. Responding to my experiences with public and private gender-based violence, this work is derived from an archive I developed throughout 2016 and 2017. This work has been supported by research funding from the University of Calgary and Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador.
Avert
How does public gender-based violence exhibit itself in survivors both consciously and subconsciously? How can stranger harassment and gender-based violence be made visible within the spaces in which it operates?
Through this project, I document and present the conscious and subconscious gestures, coping mechanisms, and embodied effects that one may employ and experience in order to navigate and negotiate ongoing gender-based violence in public spaces. Drawing on my experiences with stranger harassment (street harassment) and gender-based violence, I document these gestures and embodied coping mechanisms, in order to create life-size representations on washi paper. Violence against all women continues to be a significant issue globally however such violence does not impact all communities equally. This project is limited due to its emergence from my experiences as a white, cis-gendered, able-bodied, settler artist and I therefore consider it to be a minor contribution to the increasing cannon of artists who are questioning and problematizing power dynamics within public space. Of note is the significant, collaborative project “Stop Telling Women to Smile” by artist and activist Tatyana Fazlalizadeh which centres the voices of women of colour with the context of street harassment. This work has been supported by research funding from the University of Calgary and Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador.
How does public gender-based violence exhibit itself in survivors both consciously and subconsciously? How can stranger harassment and gender-based violence be made visible within the spaces in which it operates?
Through this project, I document and present the conscious and subconscious gestures, coping mechanisms, and embodied effects that one may employ and experience in order to navigate and negotiate ongoing gender-based violence in public spaces. Drawing on my experiences with stranger harassment (street harassment) and gender-based violence, I document these gestures and embodied coping mechanisms, in order to create life-size representations on washi paper. Violence against all women continues to be a significant issue globally however such violence does not impact all communities equally. This project is limited due to its emergence from my experiences as a white, cis-gendered, able-bodied, settler artist and I therefore consider it to be a minor contribution to the increasing cannon of artists who are questioning and problematizing power dynamics within public space. Of note is the significant, collaborative project “Stop Telling Women to Smile” by artist and activist Tatyana Fazlalizadeh which centres the voices of women of colour with the context of street harassment. This work has been supported by research funding from the University of Calgary and Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador.
Hiraeth
Hiraeth is said to be a homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, a home which maybe never was; the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for lost places of your past.
Supported by an Individual Project Grant from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts as well as the Southern Graphics Council International Fellowship, Hiraeth was a project that focused specifically on the production of large-scale photo-intaglio, inkjet, and chine-collé printworks of dollhouse rooms. Through this work, I aimed to interrogate the function of the doll house as a seemingly simple plaything. I presented the dollhouse as a means for children to perceive control over a homelike situation by placing items and dolls within this miniature yet realistic structure. By photographing a dollhouse and then increasing the scale significantly, I psychologically charged the space; bringing into question the relationship between the adult viewer and the up-scaled childlike structure. Through this work I acknowledge the multiplicity and fluidity of the childhood experience, recognizing that contemporary discourses overlook the non-idealized version of it.
Hiraeth is said to be a homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, a home which maybe never was; the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for lost places of your past.
Supported by an Individual Project Grant from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts as well as the Southern Graphics Council International Fellowship, Hiraeth was a project that focused specifically on the production of large-scale photo-intaglio, inkjet, and chine-collé printworks of dollhouse rooms. Through this work, I aimed to interrogate the function of the doll house as a seemingly simple plaything. I presented the dollhouse as a means for children to perceive control over a homelike situation by placing items and dolls within this miniature yet realistic structure. By photographing a dollhouse and then increasing the scale significantly, I psychologically charged the space; bringing into question the relationship between the adult viewer and the up-scaled childlike structure. Through this work I acknowledge the multiplicity and fluidity of the childhood experience, recognizing that contemporary discourses overlook the non-idealized version of it.
Hide and Seek and other MFA work
Hide and Seek is a children’s game. It can also be thought of more broadly as the act of concealment and of searching. The works in this exhibition ask viewers to consider the things from our past that we consciously and subconsciously hide as well as the objects and spaces in which we seek comfort and refuge.
By staging obscure scenarios of objects floating in spaces and blanket forts in deep dark rooms I intend to evoke the tensions that lie between the perceived magic and anxiousness of the childhood experience. Informed by collections, ephemera, monsters, and memory, Hide and Seek is an exhibition that recalls the past through constructions in the present in order to understand the experience of growing up and more broadly living with anxiety in the world today. This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the University of Alberta.
Hide and Seek is a children’s game. It can also be thought of more broadly as the act of concealment and of searching. The works in this exhibition ask viewers to consider the things from our past that we consciously and subconsciously hide as well as the objects and spaces in which we seek comfort and refuge.
By staging obscure scenarios of objects floating in spaces and blanket forts in deep dark rooms I intend to evoke the tensions that lie between the perceived magic and anxiousness of the childhood experience. Informed by collections, ephemera, monsters, and memory, Hide and Seek is an exhibition that recalls the past through constructions in the present in order to understand the experience of growing up and more broadly living with anxiety in the world today. This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the University of Alberta.
Earlier