Preview Article in the Winnipeg Free Press

 Here is a digital clipping of an article by Alan Small about the upcoming exhibition Headlines: The Art of the News Cycle at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. You can also access the article here (although it might be behind a paywall). I posted an excerpt pertaining to my work at the bottom.

Exhibition Opening at the Winnipeg Art Gallery

Detail of The Aqueduct. Intaglio, digital print, chine-collé. 2022. 

I would like to invite you to the opening of Headlines: The Art of the News Cycle, at the Winnipeg Art Gallery on December 2, 7-9pm (doors at 6pm) in celebration of the 150 anniversary of the Winnipeg Free Press.

I am over the moon excited to have a series of prints in this exhibition! I plan to attend the opening on Friday and hope to see some of you there.

Storied Land: (Re)Mapping Winnipeg is an artist's book exploring segments of the colonial and racial history of settlement in Manitoba and Winnipeg through the use of layered etchings that recall the diverging narratives of experiences. These histories have been sourced from local newspaper archives and from various accounts of Indigenous people, Métis people, and Mennonite settlers. This collection of prints and texts emerged as an invitation from the Winnipeg Art Gallery to create a series of prints for this exhibition. While I have mapped parts of the city in my artworks for more than a decade with a focus on landmarks and the neighbourhoods I commonly frequent as part of my search for connection and belonging, this project gave me the opportunity to learn more about the colonial history of Winnipeg. It also allowed me to further explore the colonial history of my own roots and challenge the settler narratives I grew up with. My maternal great great great grandparents were among the early Mennonite settlers that migrated to Manitoba between 1874-1877. They settled in the East and West Reserves on land granted to them by the Canadian government, but which had already been at least partially requested by local Métis residents.

Archives and newspapers give us access to parts of our history, evidenced in the reporting, but also in the omissions in that same reporting. I am interested in the language and tone that is used in the reporting and how it has changed over the years, particularly in the way Indigenous and Métis people, as well as settlers, are represented. On the one hand, these representations are a reflection of the perception of racial differences in their time. On the other hand, they have played (and continue to play) a critical role in shaping public opinion. This artist's book invites us to question our biases, our perceptions, and our understandings of history, and challenges us to decolonize our thinking.

Winnipeg Neighbourhood Archival Inkjet Print

Winnipeg Neighbourhood, Archival Inkjet, 24"x36" image size, 30"x42" paper size, 2020. 

I'm quite behind on my blog posts, but I hope to remedy that in the near future. Since becoming a mom and working in the studio only part time, I just have not been able to find the time to post updates on my work. 

I made this digital print for an exhibition I had scheduled for November 2020 at Fleet Galleries in Winnipeg. I had just finished the final print for the show when I was notified, that the exhibition would not happen due to another complete Covid-19 lockdown. I haven't really shown this piece anywhere yet or advertised for it, but I really quite like it. I had all these photographs from a previous film photography project in my archives and I decided to digitize them to make this digital print to celebrate the colourful houses in Winnipeg's Fort Rouge and Wolseley neighbourhoods. As you can probably tell, I just love the Winnipeg street scenes.