Tag: writing | Page 2 | Femme Art Review

Colour, Perception, and Affect: Christina Mackie

September 21-November 2, 2019

Catriona Jeffries, Vancouver, BC

by Helena Wadsley

Mackie_2TRACKS_2019_CJ_2019_install_01 — Christina Mackie, 2TRACKS, 2019, audio, 9 minutes, 54 seconds. Installation view, Catriona Jeffries, Vancouver, 2019. Photo: Rachel Topham Photography. Courtesy Catriona Jeffries, Vancouver

The new location of Catriona Jeffries in an industrial area of East Vancouver has high black fencing hems in the courtyard, with a stretch of busy train track just metres away. Installed in the far corner across a stretch of beige gravel is Christina Mackie’s audio piece, her first work in this medium. She recorded the grinding, squealing and clanking sounds of the trains that trundle past frequently. The only difference between the real and the recorded is that the audio piece plays at regularly timed intervals. The mimetic sounds pull at memory in an affective way; the recognition of the sound as it becomes more audible conjures up images of station platforms on dark nights in the mode of a romantic film set. It is haunting and surprisingly delicate, which also sums up the large installation waiting inside.

fullsizeoutput_a — Christina Mackie, Colour Drop, 2014. Installation view, Catriona Jeffries, Vancouver, 2019. Photo: Rachel Topham Photography. Courtesy Catriona Jeffries, Vancouver

When I walk into the gallery, my gaze is drawn upwards, my neck bending back to see the towering cones of Colour Drop. The fabric is membrane-like, so delicate it is almost not there, visible only for the colour each is dyed—red, blue and yellow. The windsock-like forms hover over circular, parched puddles of textile dye. At the beginning of the exhibition, the shallow pools were half full of the liquid dye, the colours matching the silk and nylon fabrics of the cones. On the final day, the blue and yellow have dried up completely, giving the tray of blue dye the appearance of ice on a puddle—sharp shards cracking the surface, a visual record of time passing. The pools have the feel of topographical images of mining residue, evoking the sense that nature has been altered. The red pool never fully dried, and one half of it is like viscous blood. The cones were inspired by Mackie’s childhood when she accompanied her marine biologist father on expeditions and observed similar forms in the nets he used to collect plankton.

fullsizeoutput_7 — Christina Mackie, installation view, Catriona Jeffries, Vancouver, 2019. Photo: Rachel Topham Photography. Courtesy Catriona Jeffries, Vancouver

Perception changes over time, hence we often remember visceral images as if they were larger than life. The way we experience art, as with everything, is mitigated by memory, intuition and reason combined, while Mackie’s interest is in the perception of colour. She presents colour that is created by the light that filters through it, whereas we are more accustomed to seeing colour when light is reflecting off a surface. That the viewer can be expected to experience only visual perception feels limiting conceptually because perception is tied with personal experience and memory. The cones also refer to the processes of making colour, especially as Mackie has deliberately chosen to use dyes rather than pigment or paint, and more specifically, dyes that are no longer used, evoking the past as historic as well as nostalgic. As with the audio of the train rolling through, my perception of these large-scale works is scrambling memory with pure visual experience.

fullsizeoutput_3 — Christina Mackie, Token no. 14, 2019, stoneware, silk, cup hook, 19 x 9 in. (48 x 23 cm). Installation view, Catriona Jeffries, Vancouver, 2019. Photo: Rachel Topham Photography. Courtesy Catriona Jeffries, Vancouver

In the Token series, Mackie pays homage to clay, approaching it with what seems like a child-like naivete. Some of the pieces appear crudely formed. This and the Chalk series are wall sculptures constructed in layers. In Chalk, the layers of chalk gesso invoke the surface of white lard. The dyes sink into the porous gesso, but the colours remain brilliant. The stoneware works have an imperfection which is balanced by the allure of the glazes, taking me back to the desiccating pools of dye, crystallizing on the narrow points of the silk as well as the pigment poured onto the layered chalk panels. The glazes, the dye pours on chalk, and the dye in the trays illustrate the different processes of applying colour. Both ceramic glaze and dye can be completely transformed by heat, oxygen, or time. Mackie re-creates dyes that are no longer used, referring to a different type of time passage, an extinction of materials through the evolution of new ones.

Minimalist sculptures are self-referential, with strong attention to materials and form and how these interact with the space they occupy. They tend to be geometric, pristine and repetitive forms. Mackie has three cones, dipping into circles. The primary colours reflect on how we see colour when light is filtered through it rather reflected. On the other hand, post-minimalist art, which included feminist art that celebrated textile-based techniques and organic forms are alluded to in the fabric cones and in the torn strips of cloth that wrap around some of the ceramic pieces. Mackie’s work contains these contradictory elements, subverting a patriarchal history of modern art by giving equal attention to the materials and processes, and allowing imperfections of the hand to remain visible. The Token series conveys the potential of clay as a formalist medium, but its vigour is in how Mackie has pushed the potential of glaze as a medium, like a glue. The shapes impersonate the spills of dye over chalk, which in turn refer to the pools of dye and the nuggets of glass. As I leave the gallery, a train is chugging past, its clanking and wheezing referring me back to Mackie’s audio piece and the obfuscation between reality, simulacrum, and memory-affected perception.

So, You’re Going to an Art Event

By Sara Peters & Dave Karrel

So, you’re going to an art event. Don’t just stand there, get R E A D Y! Oh, it’s weeks away? Perfect, you’ll need the time to prepare. Maybe you’re thinking, but I already know how to go to art shows. Ha! You couldn’t be more wrong. But worry not, this handy guide to the art of art is 2000% certified by Marina Abramovic™ herself.

Preparing for the Event

Don’t trust the Facebook event. All the people who say they’re going are not going. Anyone who marks themselves as ‘interested’ never gave it a thought.

FAR images-facebook — Illustration by Sara Peters.

Your friends can’t make it. Sorry to tell you, but it’s best you hear it from me now. One will get sick, one will be tired from a ‘brutal work day’, one will never text you at all.

If you do happen to spot someone you know, they will go missing within minutes. You will think, how is this possible in a 10×10 room? This is the art world, baby. Rules don’t apply.

Ah, the outfit. The cornerstone of any good disguise. Be sure to wear an unintuitive, semi-pre-mostly-post-modern combination of garments. Use this classic example as inspiration: Second-cousin’s work pants with a mesh top. Vintage back-issue of Life Magazine folded into a boat hat. Babybel cheese wax earrings.

To be truly unforgettable, wear a genuine mink shawl and insist it’s actually made of Beyond Meat™.

FAR images-lady — Illustration by Sara Peters.

Entering the Event

The gallery’s entrance may come in the form of a garage door, nondescript archway, parting in the bushes, or subtle parody of an existing fast-food chain, eg: McDonTalds.

Enter the event as though you expected to walk into a restaurant but, upon discovering your mistake, have decided to satisfy your bottomless appetite for contemporary arts and culture.

The Event

You’ve arrived. Your need for high art is matched only by your growing thirst. In the back, you’ll find two near-identical near-angels selling tall cans from a makeshift booth.

Keep your head down. Approach slowly. Do not bare your teeth. When offered wine, take as many glasses as you can hold (the world record is 51) and consume immediately. Do not hesitate. If you hesitate, they will, in perfect synchronicity, read from their half-finished dissertations and lay a curse that renders you a permanent installation of the gallery.

Establish intellectual dominance from the outset: Take a hurried first lap. This will prove you consume art faster than anyone else in the room.

There will be a dimly lit back patio/parking lot/semi-outdoor area where people squat on tree stumps and take long wistful drags of hand-rolled cigarettes. You can find good conversation here, just don’t bring up the art.

If the artist is your friend, congratulate them before you’ve seen the work. Grasp them by the fingertips, fingerprint to fingerprint, gaze deep into their soul, whisper, Brave. So, so brave with your eyes fully closed.

FAR images - hands — Illustration by Sara Peters.

Talk over the video that is playing on loop. You’re not actually here to see the art, you’re here to be seen with the art.

There WILL be someone whose backpack is twice the size of a Foodora delivery bag. WHAT IS IN THERE????! you will wonder but never ask.

If you run into the gallery owner, say How much? When they ask which piece you’re referring to, laugh and shake your head as you float away.

Learning the Language

Dipping into a new culture requires learning enough of the language to get around. For instance, when someone asks, what do you do? what they’re really asking is, what can you do for me? Look around. Is everyone looking at you? Good. Stand on tiptoe and mention that you know a little Japanese. If you’re looking to make an ally for the night, say you moonlight as a grant writer.

If someone tells you they used to know the artist before they ‘blew up’, it means they once shared a kiln while studying trans-epoch Trotskian pottery at OCAD and have since heavily lurked their social media.

Practice reading didactic panels before you go. The most important part is holding your face perfectly still so as to mask your inevitable confusion as you try to decipher seemingly incomprehensible sentences such as:

FAR images-panel — Illustration by Sara Peters.

If you happen to find an error in a didactic panel, be sure to chuckle to yourself—bounce at the shoulders, shake your head. Make sure someone notices, to unwittingly confirm your superior intelligence.

If there is a Q & A, be prepared for an extended speech that betrays the asker’s prolific art-making history and (eventually) yields into a bumbling reference to one of the work’s materials and a half-hearted request for the artist to explain where they got the idea.

Leaving the Event

In order to leave, you’ll need to plan an escape route. Take into consideration the following likely obstacles:

The door is actually part of the exhibit
The group of intimidating art teens by the front door (How’d they get in here? How are they so cool? Are they real?)
The man by the bar who wishes to tell you about the recent ‘urban farm’ he is building in his “friend Todd’s parents’” backyard
Actually, where is the door though? This is frickin’ spooky
Spotting the artist, and in so doing, feeling obligated to ask about their process
Spotting the curator and having them tack you against the wall for 1-6 hours so they can tell you about their process
Uneven flooring
Literally no idea what’s happening with this door situation. Will I die here??

An older couple will wander in. The realization that this is not their destination will slowly drain the expectant joy from their faces until the woman grasps her husband gently at the elbow and whispers, “Ted, we need to go.” For an easy out, pretend they’re visiting you from out of town and follow their lead.

There—you made it. You’re now an Art World Veteran. Get yourself home, crawl into bed with your takeout, and post a couple Insta pics so everyone knows what a great night you had.

Profiles on Practice: Yen-Chao Lin

Yen-Chao Lin. The Eroding Garden. Copper, glass enamel, stainless steel. 200cm x 49cm. 2019.

By Nadia Kurd

Dowsing is known as the process of finding water using divination rods. This old technique of sourcing water can be found in various cultures across the globe. For modern-day dowsers, in addition to sourcing water, “they frequently can report its volume, depth, flow direction and potability.”[1]

For Taiwan-born, Montréal-based multidisciplinary artist Yen-Chao Lin, this practice has been a significant inspiration to art. Many of Lin’s works begin organically and can be sparked by the items she collects, hears or senses. The combination of spirituality, folklore, and DIY practices—as found in dowsing— has foregrounded much of Lin’s film, installation, and textile-based works. Moreover, as a child, she was exposed to a variety of religious philosophies, as her mother would take her to places such as Buddhist temples, Sunday mass, and Mormon gatherings.[2]

Yen-Chao Lin, portrait. Photograph by Ashutoshk Gupta. Courtesy of the artist.


Yen-Chao Lin. The Eroding Garden. Copper, glass enamel, stainless steel. 200cm x 49cm. 2019.

Lin’s long-term research into dowsing which included conducting interviews and attending monthly meetings with the Ottawa Dowser’s, led to the creation of her installation Eroding Garden (2019). As a result, Lin created a three-part installation that combines 2000 glass enamelled Canadian pennies, a porcelain bowl with an erected chopstick, and several suspended, casted hands holding dowsing sticks, both in real and imaginary ways. As Lin writes, the work also incorporates her own family history. This history is symbolically reflected, as Lin notes;

The porcelain bowl with the chopstick is drawn from my family oral history, where my grandmother made a chopstick stand in water and communicated with the spirit of a deceased relative who was causing illness to my mother. In many East Asian cultures, chopsticks should not be left vertically stuck into a bowl of rice because it resembles the ritual of incense-burning that symbolizes feeding the dead.[3]

While the work evokes a more intuitive approach to connecting with land and water, dowsing also has an insidious, political history as well. As Lin points out, “dowsing is also used by the petroleum industry to locate oil wells, mining companies for ore, as well as the US army in Korea and Vietnam, to find tunnels and food caches.”[4]

EG_Bowl_02 — Yen-Chao Lin. *The Eroding Garden*, 2019. Porcelain, hand-forged steel, 22k gold leaf. 12cm x 12cm x 25cm.

In another installation Perchance (2018), 23 booklets, silk tapestries, and several divination sticks are arranged in a way that creates a space where “self-administered divination is offered.”[5] For this project, Lin “visited fortune tellers in Hong Kong and Taiwan, observed different collective and individual divination practices, studied the ancient tradition of I Ching and explored the materiality of silk.”[6] The work melds the sensibilities of traditional East Asian aesthetics and religious practices to forge a contemporary ‘system for divination.’ Here, visitors are permitted to interact with the I-Ching bundle (placed in the centre of the silk banners) and interpret their own numerically based fortune from reading the 23 booklets on the wall. This process ultimately melds chance and instruction and asks visitors to reflect on “socially determined networks of information distribution.”[7]

2018-04-18-SBCDeadLetter-021 — Yen-Chao Lin, *Perchance*, 2018. Photography by Paul Litherland, courtesy of SBC Gallery of Contemporary Art.

Her most recent project, The Spirit Keepers of Makut’ay (2019) also follows a highly intuitive process. This short, experimental film was shot on the rural coast of Taiwan in collaboration with the local Amis Indigenous community. Largely abstract in nature, the film poetically “unravels mixed-faith expressions from Daoist ritual possession to a Presbyterian funeral” to reveal the past Amis healers. For Lin, this work brings together the past and present to show how “nature, colonization and population migration” comes together in Taiwan’s unique spiritual landscape.[8] The Spirit Keepers of Makut’ay will have its Canadian premiere the Vancouver International Film Festival this October.

Makutaay still 10 — Yen-Chao Lin. The Spirit Keepers of Makuta’ay Still. 10:57. 2019.

Since migrating to Canada at the age of thirteen to pursue an education, Lin recalls that she had, “this overwhelming strong pulsation darting out from my heart, telling me I must leave in order to pursue what I want out of this life. I wanted to leave since I was 11, it took two years to convince my parents and it was not easy.”[9] This determination led her to pursue an arts education. After earning a Cégep (Studio Arts) diploma and a BFA (Film Production) from Concordia University (Montréal) in 2008, Lin has gone on to participate in numerous residencies, exhibitions, and performances in Canada and abroad.

With an understanding of how she may be perceived as an immigrant woman of colour, a large part of Lin’s work has also involved working with arts organizations to develop equity policies and practices. In 2019, she was the Equity Officer for La Centrale Gallerie Powerhouse, a feminist artist-run centre in Montréal. This experience made her realize “how important and challenging it is to make space for equity-seeking folks within institutions, and how education, leadership development, and solidarity can contribute to change.”[10]

Combined with an intuitive sensibility, Lin’s practice, on the whole, is rooted in examining equity and justice. “I believe in self-empowerment, the accessibility of arts, and the possibility of change through art,” reflects Lin, “I’m a critical person and I will always question the dominant structure of power, either through my work as an artist or as a cultural worker.”[11]

To see more of Yen-Chao Lin’s art and upcoming projects, visit her website: yenchaolin.com

Nadia Kurd (she/her) is an art historian and curator based in Amiskwacîwâskahikan (Edmonton, Alberta). She tweets @nadia_kurd and her work can be found on nadiakurd.com.

[1] Canadian Dowsers Association. https://canadiandowsers.org/introduction-to-dowsing/ (accessed September 10, 2019).

[2] Yen-Chao Lin, interview by author, Edmonton, AB, September 6, 2019.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Yen-Chao Lin, Artist Website: yenchaolin.com, (accessed September 7, 2019).

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid. Note: I Ching can be described as “philosophical taxonomy of the universe, a guide to an ethical life, a manual for rulers, and an oracle of one’s personal future.” For more information, see: http://www.chinafile.com/library/nyrb-china-archive/what-i-ching

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Interview by author.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid.

Tahira Rifath Humanizes Trauma Through Digital Portraiture

hyacinth rupasinghe5 — Tahira Rifath. *Hyacinth Rupasinghe.* Courtesy of the artist. 2019.

By Devana Senanayake

Watching the Easter Sunday attacks unfold on the screens of her TV and smartphone, deeply impacted Tahira Rifath.

“It was scary and traumatizing. I kept thinking what people at the attacks might have felt,” Tahira says of the violence she perceived as a spectator.

The Easter Sunday attacks in Sri Lanka that claimed at least 257 lives (including churchgoers and tourists alike), targeted three churches and four hotels, rippled through the country and left it reeling. This is the deadliest attack on the country since the conclusion of the Civil War a decade ago.

Sri Lanka is a country ripped apart by trauma. Black July and the 1983 Singhalese-Tamil riots are cited as incidents that initiated the twenty-five year long Civil War.

“I was not alive when the Black July happened but once people start to talk about all those riots, it’s so hard for them and there’s so much anxiety about it,” Tahira says about the country’s inability to reconcile its past history.

Unlike the victims of Christchurch, Tahira noticed a shift in focus in the Sri Lankan attack. The victim’s lives, achievements, and stories shrank in significance as the government and the media started hunting the back stories of the perpetrators of the attack.

Stories about the group suspected of organizing the suicide bombings, National Thowheed Jamath (NTJ) and the strategist of the entire operation, Zahran Hashim popped up all over social media. Social media, particularly Facebook and Whatsapp groups, have become hubs for misinformation, fake stories and hate speech. Even the death toll initially reported as 359 casualties had been revised to 257 after further consultation. A feeling of uncertainty and doubt plague the country.

“The people who lost their lives became a distant number. No one spoke about them.” the freelance graphic designer and illustrator says. “These people were more than just a number. They lived full, extraordinary lives. We were not giving them the attention that they needed.”

She began her portrait series by sketching out Ramesh Raju, a 40-year-old, building constructor that had saved the lives of many attending mass at the Evangelical Zion Church in Northeastern, Batticaloa.

Shantha Mayadunne4 — Tahira Rifath. *Shantha Mayadunne.* Courtesy of the artist. 2019.

Tahira has also sketched Sri Lankan celebrity chef and cookbook author Shantha Mayadunne. Shantha is remembered for her immaculate presence on Sri Lankan TV channels ITN and Rupavahini, dressed in a Kandyan style sari, presenting quick and simple recipes.

Her daughter Nisanga Mayadunne, a service quality manager and TV presenter had also perished during a family breakfast at the hotel.

Tahira gained more information about the casualties from organizations attacked on Easter such as Cinnamon Grand Hotel and the Shangri-La Hotel. Miyuru Yasakalum had been employed as a commis chef at the Shangri-La Hotel since October 2017. The ex-scout had also been a tour guide in Sri Lanka.

Miyura Yasakalum — Tahira Rifath. *Miyuru Yasakalum.* Courtesy of the artist. 2019.

To continue her project amid a storm of inaccuracy, Tahira consults either a family member or a close friend of a subject before she sketches them. After she finished her first four portraits, she felt the secondary trauma of undertaking such an intense project focused on tragedy. Secondary trauma, sometimes called “vicarious trauma” happens through constant exposure and re-exposure to traumatic stories. Her physical health had been impacted – she contracted a fever and had to press “pause” on the project.

Despite the impact on her mental and physical health, Tahira is eager to continue. She hopes to celebrate the lives of the victims and simultaneously convey a message to a racially divided country. “Even though Sri Lanka was voted the “No. 1 Tourist Destination” by Lonely Planet for 2019, people are not really open to different perspectives. I want people to understand and empathize with different beliefs and cultural perspectives,” she concluded.

Pushing the Limits: In Discussion with Julia Betts

07_2015-2017 (Orange) — Julia Betts, *2015-2017.* Personal belongings embedded in plaster. Courtesy of the artist.

Questions by Adi Berardini

Artist Julia Betts channels art as a means of self-destruction—her work Detritus consists of self-portraits that are destroyed by shredding them back to earth, with the dust of the remains left in shades of rose pink, crimson, grey and russet. Betts brings art into the realm of imposing bodily limits through intervention. Veering towards the intersection of sculpture, performance, and installation, her work is defined by intentional unpredictability, the use of unstable materials and orchestration of situations in which her body and constructed space are subjected to forces of disorder.

Betts pushes a range of materials to the limits of their utility while placing herself in precarious circumstances that function as metaphors of emotional and psychic vulnerability and demonstrations of intentional disarray. Interested in the impossible, Betts creates uniquely precarious situations with ambiguous results that often lead to disruption and upheaval. She challenges the limits of representation by reflecting how life and art are hardly static but constantly transforming.

Can you explain more about how your work is influenced by emotional/psychological vulnerability and making a mess, but a highly deliberate mess?

I see messes as related to emotional and psychological vulnerability—they have to do with the need to control, the inability to control, and the subsequent loss of control. You can either lament the failure to control or revel in the messiness as a release from confinement. In this way, messes can embody dread or catharsis, reflecting an inability to keep accidents from happening and a yearning for release. Through viewing a mess, the image of the cultivated performer breaks down, revealing the human imperfection within the artist’s process. The viewer may perceive the spillage as the artist’s mistake and [therefore presume] that they have become privy to the artist’s unintentional expression. A mess becomes a radical expression of an imperfect image of oneself in a society that cultivates perfection. For me, messes also have a certain symbolic resonance relating to notions of femininity. Messes enact all things dirty, grimy, gory, visceral, and sensual in human experience, possibly even extending into the realm of the grotesque and traumatic when the dissolution speaks to bodily breakdowns.

09_Body as Pool — Julia Betts, *Body as Pool.* Still of performance while pouring paints. Courtesy of the artist.

Your practice seems to involve a mix of performance and traditional fine art (painting/ sculpture/installation), notably in Body as Pool where you create a self-portrait from outlining clay and pour liquidized paint through performance. Can you explain this piece further?

In this piece, I built a self-portrait by making an outline of a body with clay and I poured liquidized paint into the clay outline. The body’s color is made of acrylic paint and water. The area around the body is made of oil paint and vegetable oil, two substances [that] don’t mix. I rip into the clay walls and pour cups of paint into the image. The colors burst, erupt, flow, and penetrate through the body image both by my intentional action and by random circumstance. These intrusions into the body are meant to elicit a pain sensation. I imagine the clay as dams holding waters. I break the dams and let the waters out and the dams also just randomly burst.

Oil and water and their inability to mix relate to my interest in the impossible. The clay dams find the liquids impossible to hold. The oil and water find it impossible to merge. Because of these material properties, separation seems both fragile and unbreakable at the same time. I’m trying to depict unstable and ruptured bodily borders.

For me, there is a connection between material impermanence and the vulnerability of human life.

Julia Betts, *2015-2017 (white).* Personal belongings embedded in plaster. Courtesy of the artist.

Your piece 2015-2017 poetically captures a sense of material impermanence. The work uses your personal belongings mixed with plaster to capture how the materials become altered over time. Can you explain this piece further and how you address transition and unpredictability in your work?

In 2015-2017, belongings accumulated over two years are sorted by color (white, blue, orange, brown, black, red) and frozen in plaster time capsules. As part of the installation, labels situated nearby catalog the ephemera within each brick and describe moments when each object in each block changed colors. For example, a piece of a book with black text fades completely to white from repeated trampling, or a clear piece of hot glue accidentally sits on a window sill for months and when found, has yellowed. Permanence is contrasted with transience, transformation, and entropy. Seemingly insignificant moments and “trash” are elevated into vehicles to hold personal interactions, memories, and the residue of life.

For me, there is a connection between material impermanence and the vulnerability of human life. In my overall practice, I use materials that evoke transience and timelessness. With this piece, I attempt to control what is temporary and fragile, with what is solid and enduring, but, ultimately, the garbage within the plaster erupts with rot. Organic intervention interrupts my attempt to control and stasis.

Betts- Julia-7 — Julia Betts. *Window Screens*, 2016. Ink, steel, window screens. Courtesy of the artist.

In Window Screens, you explain how you created a steel box around yourself in a corner, filled the box with black ink and continuously dipped the sheets in the ink at maximum capacity. It seems to be an impossible task since the screens only hold the ink for a few seconds. Can you explain more about the inspiration behind this piece?

In Window Screens, the clear screen is unable to hold the black ink. Each time the ink drains from the screen, opacity and concealment relent to transparency and exposure. The untenability of the process is furthered when the box springs a leak and begins to empty the contents. The more ink I lost, the more I was unable to perform my process. It became harder and harder to make the screens turn black. I found myself scrubbing the floor with screens attempting to pick up any drop I could find of leftover ink. Eventually, I was completely unable to darken the windows and the performance ended. Even before I began this performance, I knew the possibility that the box might not be able to hold the ink. I intentionally created a precarious situation through lining the box with a tarp that may or may not be up to the task. I’m interested in placing myself in uncontrollable, vulnerable situations where accidents and disasters may happen. In this piece and my overall body of work, I am trying to create helplessness.

It seems as if the self-portrait is a common theme in your work, also appearing in the piece Detritus that shreds multiple self-portraits, displaying them as powdered remains. Can you explain your interest in the anxiety of self-representation (or the representation of self-destruction?)

I’m less interested in the anxiety of self-representation and more interested in the representation of self-destruction. This piece also has to do with my long-term interest in skin. Skin is both boundary and connection between self and other. There is a need for there to be a skin to bear, protect, carry, and represent. In Detritus, I grind images of myself with a household grater, shredded self-images of the body accumulate into layers of dust—with the colors incidental to the photographs used as source material. Photographs are a surrogate for skin. I had been doing work before this that depicted the boundaries of the body being torn, but I fully brought the body to the earth in this piece. Whereas, in Body as Pool, I imagine the body at the edge of the sea.

Your work seems to deal with imposed limitation, and at times, distress. Can you explain more about this interest and what it represents to you?

I’m interested in limits and possibilities. Either can cause distress or comfort.

I use the limitations of my body, time, space, and mark. Confinement can be a metaphor for social or psychological confinement. Within the limits, I am too much or too little. I react with helplessness and determination.

I portray vulnerability in my work in different forms. Materially, I try to create space for material agency to intervene in my authorship. Physically, my work shows the frailty of my body when it is unable to complete its tasks. Emotionally, my work exposes and reveals me in pieces like 2015-2017 where the viewer is allowed to sift through my trash. Situationally, there is vulnerability when I put myself in scenarios that I am unsure of the outcome, and, often, I share this uncertainty publicly through performance.

Check out more of Julia’s work at her upcoming show at Grid Space NYC in December 2019 and on her website and social media.

Profiles on Practice: Shawna Davis

By Nadia Kurd

Shawna Davis, Studio shot. Courtesy of the artist. 2019.

Scholar Sherry Farrell Racette notes that given the aggressive history of European colonialism in Canada and the US, a number of traditional Indigenous arts have survived because individuals and families had carried out cultural practices covertly. “The simple act of retaining and protecting knowledge was political,” writes Farrell Racette, “the materials themselves often believed to be living and potent.”[i]

For Gitxsan/Nisga’a artist Shawna Davis (also known as Hayatsgan), her beading practice followed a slightly different trajectory and began shortly after seeing the beadwork that adorned her partner’s home in 2014. Davis notes that her partner’s community of Old Crow, Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation “is a place where beadwork is life, and historically, a sign of wealth” and that he “was surrounded by it: moccasins, his baby belt beaded by his late Sitsuu Ellen Bruce hung in his apartment, medicine pouches. I had never really seen beadwork like this before.”[ii] Such beadwork practices were uncommon in her traditional territory of the Gitx̱san and Nisg̱a’a Nations as she was accustomed to the unique aesthetic characteristics of Indigenous west coast visual culture, which is well known for its form lines, button blankets, woodcarvings, and cedar weavings.

Shawna Davis. Salmon necklace design: Lianne Charlie (Northern Tuchone). Courtesy of the artist. 2019.

Davis’s skills were first developed when she participated in a workshop hosted by the ReMatriate Collective in 2017. Since then, she has been creating vibrant beaded works that are primarily meant for personal adornment. As a Gitxsan/Nisga’a person and non-traditional beader, Davis is conscientious about her practice and the implications of using distinct patterns and processes, explaining, “I understand the significance of coming from a place. To come from a place means that your sovereignty rests in your land, your language, your laws, and your art.”[iii] Each design that Davis creates is inspired by the work of other Indigenous womxn, her family, and the land, as well as the “Li’liget (our feast hall) and all of its teachings of our laws, governance and knowledge systems that we have practiced since time immemorial.”[iv]

Shawna Davis. Courtesy of the artist. 2019.

The process to create each work may take days to develop and finish. Beads are fastened to felt—which is thick enough so that it provides a strong base to stabilize the beads and other items such as porcupine quills, and abalone buttons. Each object features an array of bead colours and sizes. Sometimes these designs are also stitched directly on animal hide, quilting interface or fabric, which can contrast with and change the overall composition of the beadwork design. Once the design is fully beaded and the edges of the item are complete, the item may be gifted, traded or sold online.

Shawna Davis. Courtesy of the artist. 2019.

For the past year, Davis has been working on a much larger and more personal endeavor. She has been steadily creating objects for her upcoming wedding, which will include various items for the wedding party, herself and her groom. Not simply decorative in nature, Davis says that some of these items “will be gifted according to our clan system, laws, and protocols.”[v]

Another long-term beadwork project will include a more pointed examination of the politics and policies that continue to shape the Canadian settler state. Davis intends to make works that focus on how the government has exercised control over the lives of Indigenous people and its exploitative attitude towards natural resources, land, and agreements.

Shawna Davis. Courtesy of the artist. 2019.

Currently living as an uninvited guest on Unceded Musqueam, Tsleil Waututh and Squamish homelands, Davis continues to work as an artist full-time. For her, the process of beading is much of a creative act as it is a deeply personal one. “Beadwork is medicine to me, a strong medicine,” writes Davis, “it gives me the ability to learn patience, discipline, focus, and perseverance.”[vi]

To see more of Shawna Davis’s artwork, follow her on Instagram @strikingstick

Nadia Kurd (she/her) is an art historian and curator based in Edmonton, Alberta. She occasionally tweets at @nadia_kurd

[i] Sherry Farrell Racette, “Tuft Life: Stitching Sovereignty in Contemporary Indigenous Art,” Art Journal, 76:6, 114-123. 2017.

[ii] Artist correspondence, April 2019.

[iii] Ibid.

[iv] Ibid.

[v] Ibid.

[vi] Ibid.

Sorry, I’m Busy: The Meticulous Art of Capricorns

Support Project Space

December 22 – January 19th, 2019

51251539_302907963697536_1885132111959031808_n — *Sorry, I’m Busy,* 2019. Installation shot courtesy of Support.

By Adi Berardini

If you’re a Capricorn, chances are we’re compatible—both Earth signs, something about our qualities match up well. As a Virgo, I am analytical, practical, and dare I say, I have an unruly habit of worrying about everything and working non-stop. Perhaps we get along well based on our shared anxieties.

Sorry, I’m Busy is an exhibition of Capricorn artists that looks at the relationship between artistic connections and work ethic. Curated by Tegan Moore and Liza Eurich, they shared the challenge of curating a show so seemingly random since the main commonality is based on the time of year the artists were born. However, the string that ties the work together is the shared qualities that Capricorns are said to possess—ambition, practicality, wisdom, and pessimism, to name a few. There are also a few recurring themes such as the use of fruit as a subject matter, humour, memory, and the imagery of a page turning. The exhibition seems paired down since it consists of smaller works, but its strength lies within the context of the work and how it demonstrates the artists’ personalities as distinctly Capricorn.

*Sorry, I’m Busy,* 2019. Installation shot courtesy of Support.

Pessimism and Humour

The collage work Flip Off (2018) by Maryse Larivière is comprised of two main elements—a middle finger and a lovebird against a millennial pink background. It could be interpreted that the work is giving the middle finger to a catcaller, or perhaps the patriarchy itself. Perhaps, the middle finger is towards the unrealistic expectations put on women altogether. Further on, haphazardly placed at the top of the stairwell, Water for America (2018) by Anna Madelska consists of a white fur patch and a crumpled poster. Madelska references the distribution of wheat-pasted posters used for political propaganda or advertising. This piece is quite cheeky as well since the cliffscape poster appears to look like two legs spreading—the placement alludes to looking up a skirt. She is also flipping off someone in a metaphorical way.

The sculptural work KFC by Kotama Bouabane displays this sense of Capricorn humour—the sculpture reads as a pile of materials stacked on the tile floor. The neon reflection on the black and white materials evokes a piece of technology with its streamlined rectangles; I immediately read it as an Ipad. However, at a second glance (and perhaps by reading the name KFC), one can infer that there’s a plaster cast piece of deep-fried chicken sitting on top. What appears to be a lime green painted piece of wood is, in fact, a stack of napkins.

*Polvos*, Susanna Browne,2017-2018. Installation shot courtesy of Support.

Need for Control

A quality distinct to Capricorns, so I am told, is a need for control in long-term relationships. In the inkjet print from the series Polvos, Susanna Browne uses the imagery of a chameleon on a horseshoe from a label on a Mexican love potion that gives you the power to control your man. Sounds pretty useful in all honesty. I propose that another Capricorn quality is resourcefulness.

Control also is conveyed by the second work by Kotama Bouabane, with Stereo Quality Photo Finishers. 1989. Hong Kong (2018), the print of a fruit still-life pinned to the wall with a jet-black chopstick. At the bottom, the illusion of the flipped page reads “Kodak.” I read this piece as re-establishing representation when it comes to the typically euro-centric painting trope of a fruit bowl. This particular fruit bowl image originated from a book produced in Hong Kong. Reflecting on the means of production, Bouabane is interested in the production of the paper used for printing. He explained that he visited different paper manufacturers in Japan and Germany: the Japanese factory was more traditional, whereas the German factory was driven by man-made machinery. The idea of copying and circulating imagery and the importance of cultural context as it relates to reproduction is explored.

Wisdom

The Capricorn is said to be the wise sign of the zodiac. This wisdom is demonstrated through the sound work by Niloufar Salimi, how she remembers it (2018). Both poetic and wise, this haunting work transformed the space. In the audio Salimi explains an early memory described to her of a grandmother singing to calm a two-month-old baby’s crying. On the small shuffle iPod, a voice singing a lullaby in Farsi travels through the listener’s eardrums. The lack of accuracy and subjectiveness of memory is addressed since later on, the story that was explained to her was denied by the same person. The painting hung on the door by Kim Neudorf also addresses the theme of memory—the neutral, earth-tone colours bleed together alluding to a figure. The sensibility that it’s painted in seems like a foggy memory itself, like trying to recognize someone from a dream without being able to pinpoint them.

Additionally, the piece by Shane Krepakevich seems to look towards a higher power for wisdom— the print The Book of Sand, p. 19, 022 (2018) addresses space and philosophy, the name referencing a short story by Jorge Luis Borges about the protagonist getting lost in a seemingly infinite “Holy Writ” book and attempting to escape impending infinity. The work parallels the similarities between light, space and the beating of the blood in one’s arteries. Whether or not you believe in astrology, it’s nice to think of constellations like threads binding us together by our shared qualities.

The loneliness factor (2016), a film by Aryen Hoekstra, also draws a parallel to space and the extra-terrestrial. The black galaxy background is like an ink void spilling endlessly, the planets are blips of light shining through. Suddenly, a metal oscillating calendar appears in the corner resembling a spinning globe. The hypnotizing video reflects on post-war space exploration that attempts to search for the unknown, trying to determine if there’s potential for more life out there. Analyzing the positioning of the globe in correlation to the rest of the galaxy, it projects what life could be like in the future when there are only remnants of humankind. Even on a planet of over seven billion, we’re still surrounded by the vastness of it all.

Parallel to the video in the basement, Loadout (2018) by Jonathan Onyschuk has a curious texture and materiality. The work consists of a table formed of thin aluminium that appears to be made of painted crumpled paper. Formed from WW1 barbed-wire and named after a shooter game, it references a similar post-war theme to Hoekstra’s film. Placed on the table, two melted silicone spines lie inside a styrofoam pit. It seems to allude to the collective trauma of war and violence embedded in identity, although the reception of this piece showed that its meaning got a bit muddled. Sometimes you have to embrace the unknown.

*Maquette for Unrealized Monument,* Trevor Mahovsky, 2013. Installation shot courtesy of Support.

Meticulousness

The Capricorn is known for being meticulous, which is portrayed in the work Maquette for Unrealized Monument by Trevor Mahovsky. The work is a maquette for a brushed-bronze apple with a detail-oriented rendering of a bee resting on top. The sculpture has an environmental undertone, creating elevated importance towards bees as pollinators. Whenever I see a bee, I associate how their hard work as pollinators is diminished; their population dwindling. Like the bee, the Capricorn is also hard-working. The attention to detail in the bee at this minuscule scale displays their meticulous effort—always down to the last detail.

I believe in horoscopes since, at least for me so far, they have yet to be proven wrong. Sure, maybe I just see the truth in what I want to believe, or they are obscurely written, or maybe I refuse to live in a universe that is completely random. A dice game will demonstrate that there is some predictability behind probability. After all, there must be similarities between us somehow. It’s poetic and comforting to think that we’re more alike than different based on a common factor. The beauty of Sorry, I’m Busy is uniting through art to celebrate Capricorns and their distinct qualities. This is wonderful because if they are anything like their fellow Earth sign, the Virgo, they’ll forget to celebrate their accomplishments, too busy looking towards their next goal.

Refrain / Reframe: I Learned I Had A Body by Vivek Shraya

By Maeve Hanna

Saag_00018 — Vivek Shraya, *I Learned I had a Body,* 2018. Installation photo by Jaime Vedres Photography courtesy of the Southern Alberta Art Gallery.

Trigger Warning: This text reviews work by the artist, writer and musician Vivek Shraya which deals with suicidal ideation.

Please god, don’t let me wake up.

A repeated refrain, spoken over and over, awakening in the viewer anew the realization of what it feels like to have no hope.

Can the desire to die be inherited?

One among many, or few, seldom questioned, tumbling out of mouths, written, spoken, voiced. A different kind of intergenerational trauma.

It’s just a number / it’s just a body / it’s just a life.

Is life only relatable to a number, as if it is a giant paint by number, one colour per year, fading away from one hue to the next?

These are some of the refrains that echo through Vivek Shraya’s hauntingly powerful video work I Want to Kill Myself. No shying away from the topic at hand —suicide: no shame; no hiding. Shraya unabashedly opens herself wide like an oyster pried free of its shell and allows us to sit with her and her emotions. It might be uncomfortable. We may squirm and wriggle. We may want to escape but her arresting voice, her gaze, holds us steady. The red lines of her tattoos draw circles around us, keeping us still in our place.

Saag_00016 — Vivek Shraya, *I Want to Kill Myself,* 2018. Installation photo by Jaime Vedres Photography courtesy of the Southern Alberta Art Gallery.

Her words slice through the air with a force that is both brutal and tender in its tenor. The ferociousness of her words reaches the depth of our spirits as we sit humble and vulnerable with her, listening to the darkness she has faced—although a delicateness is evoked. Swimming through the imagery and verse, tying the two together as the text and images converse and the viewer passively eavesdrops on this conversation, the viewer becomes an intimately connected third member.

I Learned I had a Body is the body, but more than the body, it is the alienation from one’s body in a society regimented by heteronormative and patriarchal systems. Shraya, being a trans woman, has learned, as one of the lines from I Want to Kill Myself, suggests “… I had a body through your condemnation of my body,” understanding the body and, in particular, her body through various relational means.

Referencing a relationship to the sacred, the familial, and other relationships that emerge in life, Shraya battled with her own acceptance of her identity and body as well as how others saw her, looked at her, gazed upon her. With the video/photo essay I Want to Kill Myself, The viewer is placed in a realm of watching, gazing passively and absorbing her visage and the armature of her being while simultaneously hearing the haunting experience of suicidal ideation and deep depression. More people than one might realize relate to this work. However, Shraya revealed in an interview how touched viewers have been by it, “The work was launched on my birthday last year by CBC Arts and it had a tremendous response from the public. It was really powerful for me. What was surprising though were the comments from people I knew. It was a strong reminder to be conscious that what we see is not always the truth and that these are important conversations to have.”

Recitation like resuscitation from walking into the lake, the great lakes, (maybe it could be): Walking into water, like the great great lakes, a recitation similar to the resuscitation of the authorly tradition, as Shraya suggests recalling Virginia Woolf’s last moment on this earthly plane. But at the age of thirty-five, her resolve seems to change, her vision shifts. The red lines loosen their grip, the letters she writes, those lines of words drawn out in tendrils unwind themselves and drop off the page as if they never existed. The story ends at the age of thirty-five. But not with the taking of a life —but the resolve to live a life.

I wanted to kill myself at thirty-five.

Shraya says again, but this is the last. In the finitude of this remaining stanza, the writer names how she came to this finishing moment. Like Virginia, but not. She names out loud, speaks the words clearly, vocalizing it to those who love her the most, allowing her to get the level of care she so desperately needed. I Want to Kill Myself names her pain. In so doing, Shraya releases some of the hold and power her pain held over her. Equally, in so doing as she states, kept her alive. In saying she no longer wanted to be here, naming this deep, guttural form of pain, Shraya aided herself in living, remaining, finding love and hope where there had been none.

Shraya wrote her suicide notes in red, the colour that adorns her skin, the colour of our life force coursing through our bodies.

We wear our scars proudly.

We bear witness to her pain and triumph in being present with this piece.

This work takes a kind of courage not many individuals possess.

Red on red, words on words.

Red on red dress.

Saag_00011 — Vivek Shraya, *Trisha,* 2018. Installation photo by Jaime Vedres Photography courtesy of the Southern Alberta Art Gallery.

Equally moving is Trisha the accompanying photo essay in I Learned I Had a Body. Here Shraya recreates photos of her mother by presenting herself as her mother. She speaks in her text to the overwhelming desire to escape her own body, that which literally resembles her father’s, and to make her mother, the matriarch of the family happy and proud. She suspects that her mother always wanted a girl but prayed for two boys to give them a better life, one without the suffering, ridicule, pain and disadvantages that come with being a woman. In Trisha the artist reveals another instance where the body comes into play – adorning herself playfully in all the accoutrements from the chosen photographs, Shraya masterfully mimics the original image, creating a mirroring effect both literally and metaphorically, revealing how she “…modelled [herself] – my gestures, my futures, how I love and rage – all after you,” her mother. She revels in the joy that her mother had felt as a woman prior to her immigration to Canada and becoming a mother and wife and muses about how she can live that out on her mother’s behalf now as a trans woman. Perhaps one of the most stunning images in the series is a photograph of Shraya and beside it, her mother, lying supine on a reclining chair mirrored within the image as if seen through a kaleidoscope. Repeated upon itself it’s a joyful revelation in celebrating womanhood. Dazzling in red, enjoying the sunshine, Shraya and her mother arrestingly hold the audience’s gaze.

Reading I’m Afraid of Men in tandem with this exhibition brings the theme of the body throughout Shraya’s work into clearer focus. Throughout her latest book, Shraya highlights the ways that her body validated and also betrayed her and her identity. In one instance Shraya observes how she studied men in order to portray herself as more masculine:

Consumption is a key to masculinity. … I lift weights, all the while reprimanding my body for not conforming, for never quite looking buff or white enough. What would my body look like if I didn’t want affection from gay men and protection from straight men? What would my body look and feel like if I didn’t have to mould it into both a shield and an ornament? How do I love a body that was never fully my own? (31).

While the book focuses on the fear of the male sex, this instance where the body emerges refocuses how internalized our vision understanding of our bodies can become. Shraya reveals in this excerpt how displeased she is with her body, how she feels about accepting it in all its realities. What becomes compelling is the observation of how Shraya comes to accept what she has seen as flaws within herself and finds courage therein. Writing this review as a queer white woman, I am at a disadvantage of deeply understanding the trauma this instance, among others she recounts, inflicted on Shraya. However, bearing witness to and acknowledging her story by being present and allowing this work to take the space it needs within me and the gallery space provides a platform for this necessary dialogue.

Saag_00013 — Vivek Shraya, *Trisha,* 2018. Installation photo by Jaime Vedres Photography courtesy of the Southern Alberta Art Gallery.

The compelling presence of words in this exhibition is not to be overlooked. I admitted to Shraya that I knew her primarily as a writer, while she sees herself first and foremost as a musician. Language and narrative present themselves as the foremost forms of expression for her. This is not to say the work requires the accompanying narratives, but more so that the work is activated by it, that through language Shraya is able to build a visual and auditory experience for the viewer.

Shraya offers a forum and platform for having critical yet tender conversations, for providing a space to be vulnerable, to be uncomfortable, yet acknowledge it, to push ourselves a little, to attempt to understand the limits of hope and despair, love and unconditional kindness. It is an offering to those who have struggled, who have attempted or contemplated suicide, who have been down that dark road. It demonstrates that even in the darkness, there is a light. And as a friend has said to me, it is when you hit the ocean floor that you are able to push yourself back up to the surface. Shraya’s hand is there as an offering to help you step out of those icy waters.

Bridget Moser: Prop Comedy & Consumer Anxiety

bridgetmoser_2 — Bridget Moser, Season of the Witch (2016). Photo by Yuula Benivolski courtesy of Doored.

By Alexandra Bischoff

We live in a society of spectacle where our dreams are often wrapped up in consumer realities. Sparkles and sequins are not practical, but they do catch my eye. “To post or not to post,” but I graze on social media—and their targeted ads—compulsively. Fuck Nestle, but I do miss eating Häagen-Dazs. And neoliberal feminisms got me thinking, like, “I need a new lipstick to be a strong woman.” Some days this feels true. My ideal-I is only the proper shade of violet away.

A few things I would buy as a performance artist if I had unlimited funds:

Several zentai suits in various metallic shades
“Egg Sitter Gel Support Seat Cushion as Seen on TV”
A customized neon sign that reads “a muse me”
Plane ticket to France, so I could take a selfie in front of Victorine Meurent’s grave
1000 copies of the book “Rosa Luxemburg speaks”
1000 lbs of butter, in sticks
A large filing cabinet
Western-style butter.Steve Karg via Wikimedia Commons.

When I explain Bridget Moser to people who aren’t familiar with her work, I first call her a prop-comic because of her use of objects (Marcel Duchamp would love her for her candid use of the ready-made). Then I describe her comedy as awkward because her jokes are always wrapped up in some form of anxiety. But a more nuanced analysis would find that Moser’s objects and anxieties have everything to do with each other, rather than being discrete means to a punchline.

During her artist talk at Concordia University in October of 2018, Moser admitted that sometimes she purchases items—a bright red air dancer, for example—before she knows what to do with them (CICA, 2018). As a follow-up, during the Q&A I asked the artist to speak to her proclivities towards objects. Her purchasing habits came as a surprise to me; I had imagined the artist strolling down the aisles of Walmart or Ikea, pondering her next performance, seeking out and curating the things she imagined herself working with. Instead, her buying practices appear to be far more casual. It sounds like she is drawn to certain things, finds stuff that she just has to have, and stocks up before connecting them to her archives of audio, text, and gesture. She is a collector, like the rest of us.

Don’t be self-righteous; all of us love objects. Minimalism is a luxury and should be taken as an exception to the rule. Beginning with the inflated consumer culture which frames the 1950s, and spiralling into the Globalization and Neoliberalism constituting the 1980s, North America’s identity has always been defined by the desire to spend. What our present moment has inherited is consumer anxiety which pressures us to replace our smartphones every year, and causes us to wrack up an inexplicable amount of credit card debt.

bridgetmoserstill — Bridget Moser, Chaotic Neutral (2017). Photo by Yuula Benivolski courtesy of Doored.

Performance artists are particularly poised to remedy consumerist anxiety because we buy practical things under the guise of artistic worth. We don’t spend hundreds of dollars a year on swathes of canvas, variously-haired brushes, and exquisitely pigmented paints—the most useless, hedonistic, and glorious of art materials. Instead, performance artists buy things that we might otherwise utilize in our day to day lives. The small ladder from Moser’s Real Estates (2013), the lip-shaped throw pillows from Chaotic Neutral (2017), and various teal-coloured apparel from Don’t push the river. (2013) could also function as tools for the artist’s studio, furnishings for her apartment, or as personal gym gear. I wonder if she uses these things for their intended uses, besides as performance props, or if they sit pristinely on shelves awaiting their next performance-induced animation.

And as it turns out, consumer anxiety and the all-too-familiar buyer’s remorse we collectively experience might be culturally healthy. Whether intentional or not, these feelings of self-doubt and monetary concern could be aptly applied outside of our individualist selves, as prompts to investigate how the objects we lust after are produced in the first place. It is ethically valuable to question who profits off of the vulnerable labour required to make our exponentially cheaper products (though the ability to do so also requires a position of certain privilege).

Performance artists could be considered especially bound to this duty; our practices can be politically motivated in many ways, but conversely, often rely on the purchasing of common things in a very a-political fashion. Moser said that she has always loved objects, but “feels equally troubled” about where she gets them (CICA, 2018). The artist understands the “economic disparity that goes into a lot of the way that these things are made or sold,” and that even the labour of finding it in a warehouse somewhere and sending the objects to her are fraught with exploitative ethics (CICA, 2018). Amazon, for example, doesn’t have the best track record as far as labour practices go. Moser also told the audience that she’s not yet sure how to address these concerns in her performances. I think she’s inadvertently doing a good job of it already.

bridgetmoser_3 — Bridget Moser, Season of the Witch (2016). Photo by Yuula Benivolski courtesy of Doored.

The anxieties in Bridget Moser’s performances are served up through the objects that she employs, so I see very little distance between the anxieties of an individual and the anxieties of contemporary consumerism in her work. Broadly, we can understand Moser’s performed anxiety as the anxiety of displaying sincere emotion—a concern common to the glossy veneer of commodity culture. In her exaggerations, Moser simultaneously makes fun of intense emotional reactions, absurd paranoias, and the disappointing realities of everyday minutia—a carbon copy of advertising tactics—while also celebrating, in earnest, the bizarre affections and attachments we form with inanimate objects. In fact, Moser employs the same tactics as television commercials. These are loud, human displays which catch our eye and tell us what we need in order to mitigate our complex concerns, usually to profound and comical psychoanalytic ends. What are commercials, after all, but displays of hyper-human versions of ourselves? Commercials create exaggerated, if not unflattering portraits of human desire—and what we usually desire is for our every minor, mortal agitation to be consoled.

Moser’s inflated and ultra-physical connections with her props best sums up the modern day consumer’s relationship with objects. When we buy, we temporarily salve the wounds of our knowing doom, and cling to our new things as a kind of security blanket. This relationship is absurdly devotional. We know we are killing the planet, but we still buy bottled water. The office coffee maker is evil, but those Keurig pods are so cute and convenient. This pink, plastic watering-can shaped like a poodle is as good as a baby—it might as well be “my son” (Freak on a Leash, 2016). And if given the choice to choose between objects of anxiety or anxiety without objects:

WHAT WOULD YOU DO? WHAT WOULD YOU DO? WHAT WOULD YOU DO?

Season of the Witch, 2016

Gathering Of Green: Of, In or Under by Jasmine Reimer

Forest City Gallery

September 7 – October 11, 2018

By Adi Berardini

Photo documentation by Laura Findlay.

Jasmine_reimer_5 — Jasmine Reimer, Of, In or Under, Forest City Gallery 2018. *Photo documentation by Laura Findlay.*

When green is mentioned, many thoughts arise—Green gardens, greenwashing, environmentalism, even vomit. In Jasmine Reimer’s installation, Of, In or Under, different shades and textures of green emerge, creating a surreal scene. With green fences stacked on one another to create an encapsulating structure, rough green hands, Perrier bottles, and a green fire pit, there’s no shortage of the colour.

While walking through the structure, it feels like you’ve landed on a different planet, surrounded by a myriad of items that seem vaguely familiar yet somehow out of place. Uncanny pillars sprout monsteras and human feet. Cacti converge into a hand, and across the structure, ropes are held in green plastic bags. Abject owls stalk you with nearby feathers slicked down. Manufactured makeup sits on a shelf and acid green tissues disperse from the upright logs. Below the snails carefully placed in rows, glass fish are spotted swimming. A pale green mesh bridges the gaps in the fence-like structure, the shades of green ranging from pastel, lime, and deep forest green.

Jasmine_reimer_6 — *Photo documentation by Laura Findlay.*

Like language, the cave and its elements are constantly shifting. The signifiers seemed jumbled yet carefully organized, with pieces lined up like trophies on a shelf. They relate to each other in a different way than the outside world in which we occupy. The multiple parts are in conversation with each other in a language we are not able to completely understand. Connecting the surreal and the fabricated, strange rituals make up this universe, perhaps ones that are not familiar to the world as we know it.

This immersive installation reflects on the touch of humans, and how we seem obsessed with modifying the environment we occupy. Although this installation doesn’t explore environmentalism explicitly—it dives deeper into the subconscious, referring to the peculiar nature of dreams. The unnatural human-made elements collide with reference to the outdoors. While parts seem to reference change, like the fingers growing from the dirt, aspects of this environment stand frozen in time like constricted birds. This world seems obsessive about the fake and manufactured, paralleled to the Anthropocene era we live in today. In this world, time and space relate to each other in a different way.

Jasmine_reimer_4 — *Photo documentation by Laura Findlay.*

In An Etymology of Things by writer Hiba Abdallah, a text in response to the exhibition, language is lent to help “circumnavigate” the space. There is mention of the “Nartificial: made or produced by human beings rather than occurring naturally. Copying nature until the lines become blurred between what is artificial and what is organic.” Although this universe is completely fabricated, the reference to the human body through hands and fingers are apparent and the personification of objects is implied. The body finds itself interpreting where it belongs in reference to its many components. Moreover, it feels as if there is a greater reference to how we relate to a world where the environment is increasingly adapted and materialized to meet human needs. The line between what is naturally occurring and what’s fabricated becomes blurred.

Green was everywhere before advertising was, before this artificial world that humans built.

There’s reference to performance, using formal elements from the types of objects you might find at a garage sale. This work has a feeling of a retro television set and the objects are actors on their set stage. If you’re quiet, perhaps you can hear the birds whispering. The installation also uses the framework of a set, and there’s a further link to theatricality since Chloe Lum and Yannick Desranleau, Xuan Yu, and Patrick Cruz performed their interpretations of the work through performance art and music. This space is used as a platform for other happenings to occur.

When people think of the feminine, they tend to think of pink. Why doesn’t green come to mind? Pink has always seemed like an artificial colour; too soft to be truly feminine to me. Green is growth and enrichment. It’s earthly, verdurous and viridescent. Oscillating between blue and yellow on the spectrum, green is a complex colour since, like this installation, it’s comprised of different parts. I was most fascinated while mixing greens when I worked in a commercial paint store since all the greens were the most loaded with pigment. Rich and layered, an earth without green is no earth at all. Green can be unpleasant, yet it can be sublimely peaceful. Like this installation, femininity is a performance that falls under a spectrum as wide as green. Femininity is multi-dimensional, just like green.

Jasmine_reimer_2 — *Photo documentation by Laura Findlay.*

The essence of green used to artificially label something is highlighted in this installation. Green, with all its vibrant associations, is appropriated often. It’s appropriated for consumerism as a label slapped on cleaning products, which may, in fact, be worse for the environment. It can even be appropriated for mass-scale government energy projects to get the vote and reassurance. But deep down, green is a colour that appears naturally through photosynthesis and chlorophyll. Green was everywhere before advertising was, before this artificial world that humans built. Green in its natural state is left alone to grow and not used as a sales tactic. Green is all about naturally occurring relationships—the sky and the sun all feed the colour green. This installation is truly ironic, yet successful in its juxtaposition since it makes you wonder what green signifies in a society seemingly growing farther away from it.