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25/3/2011

Wanda Nanibush and Ariel Smith

Women's Art Resource Gallery - WARC, Toronto

WARC Gallery is pleased to present new installations by Wanda Nanibush and Ariel Smith.
Presented in conjunction with Images Festival

The intersection of audio, video, new media in the new installations by Wanda Nanibush and Ariel Smith allow the artists to explore the haptic qualities of memory and subjectivity. They use material and technology to give the audience an experience of the hidden, unexplored, incommunicable aspects of a life story, a gendered identity, violence, loss and love. It is the communication of bodies to other bodies, a messy imperfect communication not concerned with the facts of an experience but with the bodies field of knowledge. The exhibition points to an experience of the way in which our subjectivity and identity is partly inscribed by chance and by others expectations, as much as by our own experiences and choices.

Nanibush presents three installations. One features a large tub of milk with a small drip of red paint being continually dropped into it. The tube is on the ceiling next to a projector playing a video of an ever-turning body . The video is projected onto the milk. The drip falls from the ceiling to tub. The piece is never the same and the symbols and signs are open to a variety of interpretations and experiences.

The second piece consists of a bed of sand (taken directly from Nanibush’s reserve on Christian Island, ON). Under the sand are sensors the audience can walk on. Each plays audio vignettes of life experiences expressed in prose. On the wall above the sand is the projection of a live real time video image of Nanibush reserve. This work collapses time and space between two homes and the past and present. The video has a dark security camera style image. Most places now have these continual video feeds online which you can log into at any time of day and from anywhere.

The last installation of Nanibush’s is based on the story of her first memory of being taken from home into the state’s care. There is a sparse avant-garde soundtrack periodically punctuated by the sounds of small Northern Bush planes taking off and landing, a poetic rendering of her first memory and the inauguration of a life of arrivals and departures. This is the soundtrack of a video of winter landings and take offs Nanibush filmed over a two year period in Northern Ontario. This video is projected onto three garbage bags filled with personal items. These three bags represent how much stuff she was allowed to carry from home to home. But again the narratives are open and multiply.

Smith’s large installation of a girl’s bedroom marks the audience’s entry into the horrors and land mines a young girl navigates on her way to womanhood. It is an interactive work exploring the often-terrifying reality of growing up female. These are the things that scare Smith the most; these are the things that really do go bump in the night. You can enter a life size set or diorama of an over the top girly bedroom where you can lay on a twin sized bed with hyper feminine bed clothes, a canopy and stuffed animals. Beside you sits a little night table covered in little porcelain figurines. Above the bed on a ceiling is a looped video projection of re-edited images and scenes from monster movies set to an original, experimental soundscape or score. The work is darkly humorous, disturbing, visceral and unapologetically feminist, portraying themes of childhood sexual abuse, sexual exploitation, unwanted pregnancy, rejection, self loathing, heartbreak and misogyny. Imagery and signifiers of innocence and archetypical girlhood are contrasted and warped by dark, ominous settings and aesthetics. Symbolic representations of longing, inadequacy and the internalized pressures a patriarchal society forces upon women are examined and subverted.
BIOS:

Wanda Nanibush
Wanda Nanibush is an Anishnawbe-kwe curator, word and image warrior from Beausoleil First Nation. Her last work, Land Minds, was exhibited at the University of Waterloo Art Gallery in a exhibition curated by Jeff Thomas, Called Home/Land & Security. Philosophy, culture, memory and the unknown drive her experiments.

Ariel Smith
Ariel Smith is an award-winning filmmaker and video artist who has been creating independent works since 2000. She has shown at festivals and galleries both in Canada and Internationally. Ariel’s personal experiences with difference and marginalization have formed the basis for much of her film and video work. She is inspired by what she sees as the everyday horrors of being a girl. As an artist Ariel is compelled to use both surrealism and expressionist aesthetics reminiscent of classic horror genre to explore the often-terrifying reality of growing up female. Her work is disturbing, darkly humorous, visceral and unapologetically feminist.

The exhibition is part of the Images Festival of Independent Film and Video (March 31-April 9, 2011).
Opening Reception Saturday, April 2, 2011 2 – 5 PM

Image: Christian Island

Women's Art Resource Gallery
401 Richmond St. W., Suite 122, Toronto Ontario M6H 1N9 (Canada)
Regular hours: Tuesday – Friday, 11 a.m. – 5 p.m.; Saturday, 12 p.m. – 5 p.m.
Free entrance

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