The Body Electric is excited to present this year’s digital art show, inspired by the ICRE 2019 theme of Diversity in Residency Education. Contributors were asked to reflect on the theme of diversity in medicine and healthcare. Artists and practitioners responded from various experiential and critical perspectives to related themes including: Diversit(ies); Inclusion/ exclusion; and Dis/ ability. They responded through an incredible array of aesthetically rich and challenging artworks, from sculpture, to painting, collage, and video.
The Body Electric understands art as an intervention that explores, disrupts, deepens and reimagines medicine. Art offers a set of practices for meaning-making, looking, and reflecting through which we can stand in new relations with the subjects and objects of health care.
Within healthcare, it is often the job of physicians to classify bodies according to disease, demarcating the normal from the abnormal. We can be both influenced by and in turn shape these divisions within larger society. Such binary classifications are likely as old as civilization. In her classic work Purity and Danger, Mary Douglas catalogues the ways in which society maintains its perimeter of belonging by casting that which is impure or imperfect outside of the social. The non-conforming body can become a site of shame and disgust. Othering always works on this principle of exclusion, whether it is based upon race, gender, nationality, or disability.
Within disability studies, and other disruptive sites, people are rejecting rigid and shaming binaries of exclusion, reclaiming the body as a site of transgression, celebration, multiplicity, and non-conformity. Several themes emerged among this year’s submissions
AbjectionSeveral artists both depicted and unsettled the process of abjection, or the discarding of that which is deemed monstrous, unkempt or grotesque, particularly the feminine body and its reproductive functions. Laura M. Ajayi in We used to be so much closer explores the maternal, while Marnie Blair aims to present early modern anatomy from a distinctly female point of view, in Dissecting Dissection. Lorène Bourgeois, in The Dorsal Root, High Ground, and Profondeurs uses intimate drawings that explore “notions of beauty, intimacy, normality and otherness”. Eve Chartrand and Jean-René LeBlanc “investigate the nature of women’s negative body representations associated with ageing and illness,” in Material Agency, and Tamires Para, in Thick Skins: Our Journey Toward Communal Healing, depicts the scars of patriarchy. In Patched Skirt, from Moving Home Project, Amelia Merhar literally uses the clothing from her body as the skin that tells the story of her embodied journey as a homeless youth. In The Animation of Mortality: Ne Me Quitte Pas, Caroline Falby aims to create new cultural narratives of the illness experience through mixed media, while using art as a “therapeutic space to reflect on identity, stigma and loss.”
Medicalized bodySeveral artists explicitly traced how the medicalized narrative of the body impacts their identity. Chelsey Campbell, in admission, reclaims this medicalized body as an expression of self-portraiture. Chantal Gervais, in Vitruvian Me from The Body Ineffable (Les maux non-dits) series, also embraces the self-portrait, created through MRIs, as a way of exploring and disrupting this medicalized construction through imaging. Karolina Szablewska explores the expanding boundaries of this body, examining the “relationship between our bodies, disability, medical technology through the sci-fi pop culture forms of cyborgs” in Make it Work. In her video Louise Snowball, Room #237, Ellen Snowball explores and critically interrogates medical spaces of care.
Spirit/ BodySeveral artists explore another false dichotomy, between body and spirit, and the too-often exclusion of spirit within our approaches to healthcare. Jennifer Clark, in What can’t be seen, explicitly questions the boundaries between body/spirit, and relates these to the boundaries we erect between fact and intuition. In Pillow Talk, Jenny Chen depicts the experience of depression, using drawing, painting and printmaking to explore themes of vulnerability, emotions and spirituality. Using colour and movement in Eau, Terre, Feu et Air, Hajar el Kamouni looks at the elements of life.
Ability / RecoveryThe theme of disability meets artists who explore ability and what it means to “recover”. In Relations of Recovery, Emily S. Armstrong uses art-making as the fabric(ation) of healing. In Jump & Slap, Alexis L. Bulman deploys performance and installation art to capture phases of invisible disability and the way that disability has sculpted her body. Darcia Labrosse demonstrates the physicality of art-making itself in Industrial Copper No. 5.
Belonging / DiversityMany artists in this exhibit celebrate diversity, from the small life of marine diatoms in Gina Jacklin’sCorethrom (Admunden Sea), Oamaru Fossil, and Centric Diatom; and the microbial life in Noni Kaur’sMicroBial Feast; to the striking visual patterns of human diversity found in the visual narratives of Talysha Bujold-Abu’sWhat I hear I keep, which explores the liminal space of mixed heritage identity. Jules Florence’s photograph Pride 4X pictures belonging and sexual identity. MANDEM’sA Wish That I May Come Amongst You captures the intersecting and evolving “narrative of medicine, science, mythology, disability, identity/culture, family, and love.” Bryn A. Ludlow’s dynamic piece Their Stories uses art-as-process to explore her own spaces of belonging as an insider/outsider in her health research.
Within healthcare, practitioners too can embrace this permissiveness to play with, transgress, and reject established boundaries of normalcy and belonging. On a personal level, we all eventually have to contend with being in a body – a body that oozes, decays, and eventually dies. Reconciling with this is essential to our own wellbeing and to our ability to embrace our colleagues and patients in all of their diversities.
In teaching, we need to be aware of our own ‘biopedagogies’ – the ways that we can subtly reinforce the idea of a well-functioning, healthy body to the exclusion of the diverse array of people that we work with and provide care for. We hope that you can celebrate the diversity of this exhibit and join us to re-vision ability, wholeness, and inclusion.
We thank all of the artists who contributed to this year’s exhibit. We are grateful to all of the work of our talented jury members – Andrea Charise; Max Montalvo; Sara Roque; and Stephen Tulk – and to Sara Armata who assisted with curation and helped to make the show a reality. Thank you to Sara Wilde for her exceptional work on the video. We would also like to thank the team at ICRE for all of their help, and the Royal College and AMS Phoenix for their financial support of this exhibit.
Allison Crawford and Lisa Richardson
Co-Curators, The Body Electric
Artists
LAURA M. AJAYI Canada We used to be so much closer
Artist’s Statement
Ajayi explores relationships between domesticity and other cultural institutions, perceptions of feminine identities, and the (abject) maternal. This work considers birth as an initial severing of the mother-child bond and expands that moment to the accumulation of tiny separations over time which define an evolving maternal relationship. The work asks how these separations are managed, who has control, and which experiences are included/excluded in our understanding of maternal care.
Biography
Laura Ajayi (BFA ‘09) has an immersive, home-based practice that is informed by the sensory and intellectual load of domestic life and child-rearing. In addition to the productive work of mothering, Ajayi has exhibited her work and facilitated studio programming nationally. She has been featured in publications in New York and the United Kingdom and has recently completed the MOTHRA Parent-Artists Residency in Toronto. Laura Ajayi currently resides in Ottawa.
EMILY S. ARMSTRONG Canada Relations of Recovery
Artist’s Statement
Relations of Recovery is the fabrication of physical healing through the therapeutic methods of art making. Casting, gauze, stitching and ointment merge to form a cellular body. The internal and external methods of healing represented truly connect to Diversity in Residency Education: Training in a World of Differences within medicine and healthcare. Diverse methods of healing reflect varied approaches to life’s fragility.
Biography
Emily Armstrong, recent Bachelor of Fine Arts Graduate and Project 31- Life Studies Award Winner from the Ontario College of Art and Design University. Previous experience includes medical illustration, digital works, sculpture and anatomical art practice.
MARNIE BLAIR Canada Dissecting Dissection
Artist’s Statement
Development of early modern anatomy centered on the dissection of the body. The work I am creating investigates this history informed by early engravings and woodcuts. The role of women in this history was that of the cadaver; this was the only time women were present in the dissection theaters. My print Dissecting Dissection is based on an anatomical fugitive sheet by Heinrich Vogtherr (German 1490-1556). Scholars attribute Vogtherr to be the first to use flap anatomy as a means to reveal the interior of the body through stages of dissection. Over four hundred year, later I aim to present early modern anatomy from a distinctly female point of view. A CNC router is used to translate hand drawn imagery. Allowing a machine to create the etching removes a sense of control and creates a sense of separation. This loss of control over the machine and the female body mimics fears arising from the current political climate. My print depicts a fragmented version of Vogtherr’s, with repeated imagery, reflecting personal fears of the past repeating itself. While I have a sense of empowerment through reconstituting Vogtherr’s imagery, there is a fear of women not having autonomy over their own bodies in the future. Will women ever be able to fully climb down from the dissection table?
Biography
Marnie Blair is an artist from Northwestern Ontario. She received a BFA with distinction from Lakehead University and an MFA from the University of Calgary. She has studied at the Royal College of Art in London, UK and the Studio Art Centres International in Florence, Italy. She has worked as the Print and Paper Facilitator at the Banff Centre, taught at Thompson Rivers University and is currently an instructor at Red Deer College.
My works, a series of large-scale drawings, investigate the subject of both human and animal bodies. I am intrigued by their states of dress and nakedness, and wish to explore notions of beauty, intimacy, normality and otherness. I am interested in creating drawings reflecting not only the unique physical appearances of my subjects, but also their dignity and the singular gravity they seem to project.
Biography
Born in France, Lorène Bourgeois studied in Paris, Philadelphia (Fulbright scholar) and Halifax (NSCAD University MFA). She lives in Toronto and has exhibited widely in Canada as well in France, Korea, Russia and the United States. Her works are collected by the Canada Council Art Bank, Banff Centre, Department of Foreign Affairs, National Bank of Canada, Richmond Hill Public Library, MOCA Toronto, Ernst and Young, Senvest, Medicine Hat College, University of Toronto (Donovan Collection). Visit artist website at lorenebourgeois.com
TALYSHA BUJOLD-ABU Canada What I hear I keep
Artist’s Statement
Bujold-Abu’s artistic practice explores the liminal space of mixed heritage identity; revealing physical layers hidden behind skin, using pattern as visual narrative. Bujold-Abu addresses shifting interpretations of racialized diversity and perceived difference – blackness as both a label and state of being is central to these considerations. Through this work, she interrogates both implicit and explicit racism, acting as participant and witness to shifting interpretations of racial hierarchies.
Biography
Talysha Bujold-Abu holds a Masters of Fine Arts (MFA) from the University of Windsor (2018) and is recipient of the Outstanding Graduate Student Research Award – Excellence in Scholarship, Research and Creative Activity (2018). She also holds a BFA(H) in Visual Arts with a minor in English and Cultural Studies, from McMaster University (2016). Bujold-Abu is currently the Gallery Manager & Membership Coordinator with Arts Council Windsor & Region, a non-profit organization that programs/supports all disciplines of the creative arts.
ALEXIS L. BULMAN Canada Jump & Slap
Artist’s Statement
The methodology in my artwork arises from the diagnosis of double curvature Scoliosis which sculpted my body by twisting my spine which granted the experience of living “able-bodied”, with a physical deformity and an invisible disability throughout different phases of my life. The performance and installation art I produce examines the patterns of my physical movement and bodily occupation of space. Through this creative process the experience of invisible disability is translated into visual art.
Biography
Alexis Bulman is PEI born artist with a studio practice currently based in Montréal, Québec. Bulman graduated from NSCAD University in 2013 and employs her training by building installation pieces and video works that translate the patterns of her physical movement and bodily occupation of space into visual form. Bulman has exhibited most notably with The Museum of Canadian Art, The Confederation Centre Art Gallery and with the Glasgow School of Art, Scotland.
CHELSEY CAMPBELL Canada admission
Artist’s Statement
Illness and disability can be inexpressible through language; impossible to distill the emotional, psychological toil of bodily suffering into a cohesive narrative. Through medical examination and interrogation illness is transcribed into empirical data, severing the medicalized portrait of the body from the individual’s experience of bodily suffering. Using my history with chronic pain and disability, admission navigates the intersections of patient narratives and biomedical systems — reclaiming the medicalized body as an expression of self-portraiture.
Biography
Chelsey Campbell is an emerging artist living in Edmonton, Alberta. Through artist books, 3D modeling, digital prints, and installation, her visual research practice seeks to create a liminal space to explore disability, identity, and the medicalized body. Passionate about all things print, she serves as a board member with the Society of Northern Alberta Print-Artists and will be joining the University of Alberta in September 2019 as a Master of Printmaking Candidate.
EVE CHARTRAND AND JEAN-RENÉ LEBLANC Canada Material Agency
Artist’s Statement
Material Agency investigates the nature of women’s negative body representations associated with ageing and illness. While it explores narratives of inclusiveness and visibility outside normative representations, the work proposes images of embodied things where materiality has agency and divergent bodies are revealed and celebrated for their generative attributes. The work intends to challenge the idea that ageing is intrinsically define by disability, ontological decay, and death and proposes compassionate re-interpretations and re-considerations of ageing bodies.
Biography
Eve Provost Chartrand (artist) earned an MFA at the University of Calgary in Canada. Jean-René Leblanc (photographer) is an Associate Professor of Digital Arts at the University of Calgary in Canada. He is president of the board of Emmedia Gallery and Production Society. Both have artworks that have been presented in exhibitions in Canada, the United States, Europe, Australia and Asia.
JENNY CHEN Canada Pillow Talk
Artist’s Statement
Pillow Talk depicts the “dark side” of our psyche, which can manifest into mental illnesses with time. When I was suffering from depression, I felt like I was being absorbed by a sense of darkness. I felt like I could not control my negative thoughts when I was depressed, much like the imagery of the hands floating about the main figure.
Biography
Jenny Chen received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from OCAD University in 2016, where she majored in Drawing and Painting and minored in illustration. She uses drawing, painting and printmaking to explore themes of vulnerability, emotions and spirituality. Her exhibition history includes the Living Arts Centre (group), Toronto Media Arts Centre (group) and United Contemporary (solo).
These works reflect the intense inner light experienced through yoga and spiritual studies. Prophetic in nature and later revealing information yet to be understood. Illness followed and it became apparent through medical care the lack of concern in the patient’s insights, helpful to finding a diagnosis. What are the boundaries between body/spirit, fact/intuition? Medicine more than ever needs to be respectful of the totality of the human being by incorporating the spiritual/psychological/physical together in practice and care.
Biography
I work with oils, gouache, paper, charcoal and clay. My education includes Painting/philosophy at York University, Honours in Art/Psychology, University of Guelph, Degree in Ceramics – Ontario College of Art, a nine month residency – The Banff Centre. I have taught and shared my art practice in psychiatric hospitals, chronic care institutions, homeless shelters and a Waldorf inspired private school. Currently I continue to exhibit, teach and explore my unique sculptural paintings. Visit artist website at https://www.jenniferhopeclark.ca/
MEGAN CONLEY Canada Skull and Face Combined – Series
Artist’s Statement
As an artist, I am compelled to make work that explores issues of self-identity, born from my experiences of dealing with facial and dental deformity and the ensuing correction process that has lasted ten years of my life. Currently, my mouth, chin, jaw and gums have twenty-five plates and screws that keep everything intact. I am compelled to make mixed media portraits that deal with masking, the plasticity of the skin, and digital layers that study the physical structure of the face.
Biography
Megan Conley was born and raised in Calgary, Canada where she completed her Bachelor of Fine Art at the Alberta University of the Arts and her Master of Fine Art in Visual Studies, Emerging Practices at the University at Buffalo, New York. Megan is currently an Instructor of Photography with the Continuing Education Department at the University of Calgary.
HAJAR EL KAMOUNI Canada Eau, Terre, Feu et Air
Artist’s Statement
Cet oeuvre illustre bien le concept de la vie: Tous ces éléments (Eau, Terre, Feu et Air) seront essentielles à la création de la vie. Toutes ces matières devront co-exister dans un équilibre parfait, sans quoi le chaos rêgnera…
Biography
Présentement résidente au tronc commun de médecine interne à l’Université de Sherbrooke, Hajar El Kamouni est aussi passionnée par la peinture acrylique qui lui permet de s’évader et de faire valoir ses différents états d’âme!
CAROLINE FALBY United States The Animation of Mortality: Ne Me Quitte Pas
Artist’s Statement
My process combines combines stop animation, drawing, collage and motion graphics to interweave historical events and personal experience into new cultural narratives. “The Animation of Mortality” is inspired by the AIDS crisis and the death of a loved one by an aggressive HIV-related brain tumor. This work is an abstract representation of the virus and a therapeutic space to reflect on identity, stigma and loss.
Biography
Caroline Falby is a Canadian artist working in NYC. Her work has been exhibited at The Drawing Center, the Spring/Break Art Show,The Bronx Museum, NurtureART and the Queens Museum. Awards include a residency with the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council; a Project Fellowship from the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop; a BRIC Media Arts Fellowship; the Artcycle Discovers Prize; a grant from the Brooklyn Arts Council and the AIM Residency at The Bronx Museum. Visit artist website at https://www.animationofmortality.com/
JULES FLORENCE Canada Pride 4X
Artist’s Statement
The man in this artwork was my friend, Sheldon, a painter and artist. Sheldon was gay and his relationship with his mother was difficult because of this, and because he was raised Mormon where homosexuality is banned. He struggled with drug addiction to numb his pain. I took this photograph of him several years ago, before he passed from a drug overdose. He died last Christmas and this image has become a haunting display of the shame that plagues what we now call gay pride. Through this piece he will live on through what he loved the most, art.
Biography
Jules Florence is an artist and designer who lives in Montreal. She graduated from Concordia University with a BFA and pursued further studies in graphic design and 3D CAD. She explores the relationship between photography or digital media and painting. She is also one half of an artist collaborative.
CHANTAL GERVAIS Canada Vitruvian Me from The Body Ineffable (Les maux non-dits) series Copyright ⓒ 2019 Chantal Gervais. All Rights Reserved.
Artist’s Statement
The Body Ineffable (Les maux non-dits), is a series of self-portraits created using MRI of her body. One other piece in this series is Vitruvian Me a pictorial composite of numerous scans of herself taken with a flatbed scanner responding to Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. Acting both as the observer and observed, she attempts to identify what the images can tell her about herself; and question their use and impact on the understanding of our complex corporal and emotional conditions vis-à-vis others and ourselves. Her photo and video works deal with representation, identity, human condition and the relationship between the body and technology.
Biography
She had many exhibitions in Canada and abroad. Her work is represented in institutional collections including the Global Affairs Canada and Ottawa Art Gallery. She received the Karsh Award 2014 granted by the City of Ottawa, and the Canada Council for the arts’ Duck and Duchess of York Prize in Photography in 2002. Visit artist website at www.chantalgervais.ca
About 20% of the world’s oxygen comes from the process of photosynthesis that is instigated by marine diatoms — single celled algae playing a key role in sustaining the planet’s ecosystem.These works celebrate the vast diversity that is found amongst this phytoplanktonic group in their shape, form and function, a key trait largely responsible for their crucial, life giving role.
Biography
Gina Jacklin (Duque) is a visual artist and graduate from Western University in London, Ontario. Originally from Cali, Colombia, she immigrated to Canada with her mother at the age of 11. Gina resides in Guelph, Ontario where she works from her home based studio. Her work strives to bridge the gap between the immaterial and material world to manifest a sense of the ethereal while being grounded in the familiar and scientific. Visit artist website at https://ginaduque.com/
‘MicroBial Feast’, explores immersive, reactive, multi-sensory ephemeral installations that bridges the gaps between gender, culture, the body, the non-human world. Patrons are immersed in their own fleshly experience through reverberating colors, rich aromas, anticipation of taste and touch. The installations transform slowly over the exhibition run, echoing its ephemeral nature; at its culmination, recycling into diverse and inclusive new energy through its decomposition by millions of microorganisms beginning a new cycle.
Biography
Noni Kaur, award winning multidisciplinary artist, educator’s work explores immersive, multi-sensory, dyed-coconut installations bridging gaps between the body, the non-human world through cultural diversities. Noni investigates potentialities of expression, the sphere of embodiment through installations assuming organic forms reminiscent of the female body collapsing the realms of gender, culture, materiality stemming from her cultural history responding to intersectional identity in communities. Noni has exhibited internationally, lives and works in Toronto. Visit artist website at https://www.nonikaur.com/
In this era of transhumance and deterritorialization, my work is a trace left by a performance in a factory setting, far from the habitual painting studio space. In contrast to an actual ritualistic praxis, I use a highly sophisticated medium: electrostatic paint, also known as powdercoating, on sheets of aluminum, copper or Cor-ten steel. The process is fast and conducive method that facilitates immediacy of thought and feeling, challenging a fine line between figure and abstraction, traveling from the unconscious to the conscious. Electromagnetic fields as a phenomenon, a life force and a binding agent, have become a unique and essential partner in my creative activity.
Biography
Darcia Labrosse was born and raised in Montreal, Canada, and graduated from the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts School of Visual Arts and Concordia University. In contrast to an actual ritualistic praxis, Darcia Labrosse uses a highly sophisticated industrial medium: electrostatic paint on sheets of metal. In the past, Darcia Labrosse has worked as an editor, translator, writer and illustrator. Since 2002, he has also been a pillar in the design of the Artificial Intelligence semantic engineering Internet project IEML at the Collective Intelligence Lab at the University of Ottawa. Visit artist website at https://darcialabrosse.com/
In a continued practice of critical, visual self-reflection, I created this painting to find my position, as an artist, digital storytelling facilitator, and social science researcher, in my dissertation about diverse perspectives on digital stories created by youth who have aged-out of foster care in Canada. The painting is about honouring the youth participants who shared difficult, powerful, and resilient stories; learning from the adults who facilitated and responded to the stories; and finding my place as a researcher-as-listener.
Biography
Bryn Ludlow is a multimedia artist, and PhD candidate (ABD) in the York and Ryerson Joint Program in Communication and Culture. Her dissertation is about diverse global perspectives on digital stories by youth who have aged-out of foster care in Canada. Bryn is an International Affiliate Member at the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling at Concordia University, Montréal, Quebec. Visit artist website at https://brynludlow.com/
MANDEM United States A Wish That I May Come Amongst You
Artist’s Statement
A Wish That I May Come Amongst You is a loose-leaf artist book meant to be shuffled into ever-evolving narratives, portraying folklore motifs/archetypes related to children and pregnancy/family-making. Despite ancient heritage and pre-industrial aesthetics, they have a modern interest: the diversity of ways families emerge and exist, referencing surrogacy (“Miraculous Birth”), abortion (“Child Taker”), the alienation of being neurodivergent in a normative world (“Changeling”), and intersections of medicine, science, mythology, disability, identity/culture, family, and love.
Biography
MANDEM is an artist collective consisting of two neurodiverse, disabled, queer parents and their prodigy child. We are media-fluid, creating narratives through painting, photography, print/book-making, and academic research/teaching. The central goal of our work is to re-imagine canonical art culture and mythology in ways that not only make room for (our own) diverse and marginalized voices, but also recognizes that those voices were always already there. Visit artist website at MANDEMart.com
AMELIA MERHAR Canada Patched Skirt, (Moving Home Project), 2005-2017
Artist’s Statement
How do we carry movement, and hold it in our bodies? How do we wear our past displacements? How is transience embodied over time? Beyond the negative health implications, what can we learn from the hyper-mobile? This skirt was my personal contribution to a community arts-based research project I coordinated for my MA at York University. My thesis explores the embodiment of transience created by moving around in multiple foster and group home placements as a child. Research illustrates that up to 60% of young people living on streets in Canada have had involvement with the child welfare system prior to homelessness. This skirt is what I wore everyday on the streets.The sheer wear and tear of street life embodies transience, travel, and social exclusion in a powerful way.
Biography
Amelia Merhar is an artist, researcher and student who lives in Whitehorse and Toronto. Visit artist website at ameliamerhar.ca
TAMIRES PARA Canada Thick Skins: Our Journey Toward Communal Healing
Artist’s Statement
My art depicts the multiple facets of my experience growing up in Brazilian patriarchal society. My practice focuses on reflections about the scarring that society has imprinted on me and how it shaped my world views and self-esteem; a small sample of the sustained trauma women have to endure under patriarchy. Up until this point in my research and career, I focused on the depiction of female bodies, in agreement with my interest to explore the scars of insidious trauma caused by patriarchy.
Biography
Tamires Para is a Brazilian artist based in Edmonton, Canada. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Visual Communication Design from Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; during which she earned a scholarship to spend a year abroad in the United States at the University of Florida, studying art and technology. Recently, she has completed her Master in Fine Arts in Painting at the University of Alberta. Visit artist website at https://tamiresparafineart.wordpress.com/
Louise Snowball, Room #237 is an interactive installation that uses my experiences of observing my mother’s decline with dementia. My mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2012, and was admitted to a long-term care facility until her death. To spread awareness, I have recreated my mother’s room in her facility where narrative “clues” can be discovered. This work fits in with the current theme by offering a critical perspective on biomedical models of care.
Biography
Ellen Snowball is an interdisciplinary artist living in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She often works with photography, videography and installation to discuss identity, illness and loss. Snowball obtained her BFA at OCAD University in 2015, with a major in photography. After her mother’s death from early onset Alzheimer’s, she began to create interactive installations dedicated to dementia awareness. She is a graduate from the Interdisciplinary Masters in Art Media and Design program at OCAD University. Visit artist website at https://www.ellensnowball.com/
This painting is part of an oil series called More Human than Human, which explores the relationship between our bodies, disability, medical technology through the sci-fi pop culture forms of cyborgs. a male bust surrounded by sickly colours that is in limbo of being dead or alive, and asks: what are the extremes and limitations to which we can alter and repair our bodies? What are the expectations we have of the male body?
Biography
Karolina is a Polish-Canadian and an active disabled person that enjoys adventure and travel. With the urge to create from a young age, she is both self-taught and has an Interdisciplinary BFA from NSCAD University in Halifax. She has had a deep interest in technology since childhood, encouraged by her engineer father. Her work is privately collected in North America and Europe, and she works as a TV producer alongside being a visual artist. Visit artist website at https://artkarolina.com/
* Listed in alphabetical order by the artist’s last-names. Images are presented as details of complete artworks. To view the work, visit: https://youtu.be/Of3fECqjyhQ
THE BODY ELECTRIC | LE CORPS ÉLECTRIQUE 