Curatorial Statement

The relations of art to the wider social world, and of art as a means of action and change, are being explored and expanded by artists across the world. Whether action is considered as individual reflection, or as community and societal change, artists who explore these relations are united by an engagement with the power of the arts to change perceptions, to provoke, and to transform, particularly around issues of justice, advocacy and community-building.

Welcome to the fourth year of The Body Electric (TBE), our annual digital arts show featuring artists working across media, including photography, painting, video, sculpture and digital art forms. TBE is a forum where artists and healthcare practitioners engage, bringing diverse perspectives and practices to open up dialogue and exchange related to medicine and healthcare.

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.

This year we asked artists to respond to the ‘big question’ of social change and action within medicine and healthcare. Artists, from across Canada and beyond to the international arts community, approached the theme of social change and action, including topics of change, advocacy, social action, and equity and diversity in health.  This theme was prompted by the ICRE 2017 theme, Leadership and Change in Residency Training: A Call to Action.

Within medicine and healthcare art can be a means to reflect on the body, on care, on health and sickness, and on providing care. Art can also be part of a conscious intervention to create social change, starting with questioning our assumptions and representations. Art makes meaning and can lead to action and change in numerous ways, which include the ability of art to:

Make beautiful

Elaine Scarry, in On Beauty and Being Just, understands our response to beauty as impressing upon us the need for justice and ethical fairness. With direct appeal to the senses the object made beautiful stops us in our tracks, imparts its aliveness, and shakes us out of our self-concern, turning us outward towards others. Many of the artists provoke contemplation and engagement through beauty.  In Hypermobility MANDEM (United States of America) presents portraits of models with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome to engage the viewer with an often-overlooked condition. Sharalee Regehr (Canada) uses delicate gold leaf in her painting of the overlooked scientist, Rosalind Franklin. The delicate beauty of Tina Willgren’s (Sweden) digital art, Chiro-Hir-Amptera, and Alaa Elbarbary’s (Canada) stop-motion drawing, Biorhythm, bring our attention to the creative process inherent in looking and representing within medicine. The pleasure of form is made more beautiful through the fleeting nature of beauty and the process of change. In Nuclei Janine Steeper (Canada) plays with texture and scale to reveal the intricacies and beauty of these structures. Alexandra Roston’s (Canada) SPECTRUM digitally alters radiographs of the skull to render them beautiful objects of contemplation.

Make strange

Beauty is not the only aesthetic register of art. As Arno Kumagai and Delese Wear have suggested, art can also disrupt our perceptions through aesthetics that jolt, disturb, discomfort us. This estrangement can allow us to see anew through art, can prompt reexamination. In this exhibit, Elaine Whittaker (Canada), casts an eye on microbes, prompting us to think about our relationship with the infections we often fear. Darian G. Stahl (Canada) uses time lapse in Relapse/Remission to allow us to witness the breaking and reforming of a frozen specimen, which unfurls unexpectedly into a radiograph. Unexpected materials of wire create a scaffolding for human images in Mieke Herman’s (Canada) A Fine Balance, while Guylaine Couture uses familiar materials of the book in new ways in New dress against disease. The work of Stefanie Blain-Moraes and colleagues (Canada), in Biomusic: Sonification of the Body Electric, converts the biorhythms of the participant’s body into strange new soundscapes, while Deanna Burns (Canada) plays with our visual and proprioceptive expectations in Beneath the Surface. Rosa Verloop (The Netherlands) inhabits an ambivalent aesthetic landscape between cuteness and the grotesque – her largescale bodies, expertly sculpted from nylon, remind us of skin, and also of molting skin – but somehow evoking pathos. The strangeness and wonder invited by these artists and artworks into healthcare is an opportunity to create different kinds of spaces and interactions.

Make waves

Some of the artists use their art overtly to suggest points of action. As His Holiness The Dalai Lama has entreated, “It is not enough to be compassionate. You must act.” This is the moment when the art demands something of the viewer beyond contemplation. Michiko Maruyama (Canada) is explicit in modelling Susie the Surgeon, after the famous World War I poster, and it’s rallying cry to women, “We Can Do It!” This painting challenges the viewer not only to question gender stereotypes in medicine and surgery, but to flex their might in protest. Bradley Necyk’s (Canada) unsettling Waiting Room seeks to evoke both the emotive and embodied experience of the patient in the viewer as a vantage for not only empathy but advocacy. Fiona Legg (Canada), similarly uses her sculpture and textile arts to raise awareness around pressure sores, a largely preventable, iatrogenic condition.

Make count/ accountable

A similar injunction to take action is seen in the work of artists who endeavor to make individual lives and experiences count as a way to hold us as viewers/ healthcare providers accountable. Sarah R. Malekzadeh (Canada) creates her portrait of her grandmother Robabeh Torkzadeh

from a stamp of her grandmother’s name to signify “that each person is an individual made up of thousands of experiences and hardships, and that in medicine people should be treated as individuals, not just as bodies”. Martin Godin (Canada) represents miners, incorporating nickel and other deposits into his work Slag Bearer. Tia M. Cavanagh (Canada), in An Exploration in Identity: In Honour of my Nokimos (Grandmother), uses her art to “assert justice…[T]his work welcomes all Canadians to fill the void and honour all roles and responsibilities in Truth and Reconciliation”.

Make community

All of the art in this exhibit invites us to think beyond the work to the social space that we occupy, in healthcare and as part of (often multiple) communities. Art can be made in community, can elevate the voices of marginalized communities, and can also create new communities. Mark Liam Smith’s (Canada) One Love depicts the beauty of this interconnection with entwined hearts. In her ‘claymation’ animated video Feeling Blue Cheryl Aiken (Canada) counters the isolation, silence and stigma of depression with care and connection. Tilda S. Shalof (Canada) and Vanessa Herman-Landau (Canada) create a mural from discarded medical waste, a beautiful record from the suffering and trauma that this refuse documents. WhiteFeather Hunter (Canada) in blóm + blóð expands our interconnectedness to consider our environment and connection with the land; working at the intersection of art and community-based science, she conceives of her work as a political intervention.

All of these artists, and we hope you the viewer, make a move from the inner world of imagination to the social world, from contemplation to action, and from solitude to connection and interconnection. We hope that we continue to make space through The Body Electric for engagement and community. We thank the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons and Associated Medical Services who make this space possible through their financial support of TBE. We also thank the Jury who has formed a community of action that brings this show to life. Find this and previous years’ exhibits on our website at https://thebodyelectric-lecorpselectrique.ca and continue to be part of the community by following us on Twitter @TBE_ICRE.

Artists

CHERYL AIKEN

Anyone can create something, but when I create I have a purpose intended for that piece. I struggled with depression for many years and still do. I noticed there was a lack of acceptance and knowledge and seeing this lack is what makes me strive to make something that could fill in the gaps and offer understanding and hope to those who need it.

Biography
Cheryl Aiken is a recent graduate from OCAD University who has received a BFA in Integrated Media: Digital painting and Expanded Animation with a minor in Creative Writing. Before attending OCAD U she received a diploma at Algonquin College for Photography. She has shown her work recently at the Toronto Royal Cinema in a screening of short films for local Toronto artists.

DRE. STEFANIE BLAIN-MORAES [1], MELISSA PARK [1], TAMAR TEMEBCK [1], FLORIAN GROND [1], ERIN FLYNN [2], LIAM O’ROURKE [3] (1 McGill University, 2 Erin Flynn Post-Rehabilitation Pilates, 3 Spectrum Productions)
Canada

Biomusic: Sonification of the Body Electric

We are an interdisciplinary and intersectoral group of researchers and artists who use participatory methods to explore biomusic— a novel technology that converts salient changes in physiological signals into musical output. Biomusic translates intimate interiority into expressive exteriority and thus reveals otherwise-hidden changes in the body. Through science and art, we explore the potential uses of this technology to enhance interpersonal interactions in diverse groups of users.

Biography
Our group was formed for the event “Interfacing Biomusic and Autism: The everyday ethics of representing the physiology of what moves us”. This international initiative consisted of 4 events that took place April 23-25 in community, cultural and academic venues in Montreal. www.connectednarratives.org.

Synchronized swimming and the constant quest for perfection more closely resembled the word torture, than practice. Upon retirement I planned to leave my practice behind me, but these training habits were embedded beneath my skin. As I re-enter the pool, I engage with the water in a relaxed state, revisiting the skills I once was taught to perfect. Now my practice is more abstract as I bring my movements into the gallery space through video. I’ve removed some of the equipment that became part of my body and are no longer assisting my performance, I experience a loss of control, resulting in a growing freedom as I let go of the ideas of perfection. Challenging my experiences with a new perspective sharing my movements through a visually challenging video installation.

Deanna Burns (b.1995) was born in Toronto, Ontario and received her BFA in sculpture and installation at OCAD U. Burns’ body is her medium and her movements are the art. With roots deep in synchronized swimming (starting 2001), her training more closely resembled the word ‘torture’ than ‘practice’. As she leaves the ideals of perfection behind she embrace’s her deterioration of skill engaging with the water in new light.

Artist’s Statement
As an Anishinaabekwe, my work is connected to culture and activism. I question, re-appropriate, create narrative and assert justice while using various materials to convey message, the materials are intrinsic to the story. This work welcomes all Canadians to fill the void and honour all roles and responsibilities in Truth and Reconciliation.

Biography
Cavanagh is a multi-disciplinary artist with her BFA from OCAD University and currently enrolled in Trent University for her Masters in Canadian and Indigenous Studies. Currently doing artistic workshops in Indigenous communities for survivors of violence and workshops for LGBTQ-Two Spirit Youth.

Artist’s Statement
This artist book shows the link between women’s cancer and various ways to help them. Six women have six different cancers. They are next to six dresses that can help and perhaps protect them: art therapy, philosophy, economics, technology, etc. The research is multidisciplinary and it involves what the patient and the team around her must face. The piece is made of two books intertwined, to show the relationship between women and science.

Biography
Guylaine Couture lives in Montreal, speaks French, teaches graphic design and shares her discoveries on her blog. Each book attempts to create a fusion between the contents and the container while questioning the manipulation of the object by the reader. Browse slowly one of its artists’ books is an experience, a conversation, a relationship with her and her concerns. She participated in exhibitions in Canada, the United States, Europe and Australia.

Artist’s Statement
Biorhythm is a stop motion video installation that aims to transform everyday ideas into an abstracted representation of the life cycle and the constant change that happens with in it. The lines offer a metaphor for the constant circulation of our existence.

Biography
Alaa Elbarbary explores a wide variety of themes that revolve around the human condition as a whole with some emphasis on repetition and the parallelism of human actions, feelings, and perspectives.

Alaa Elbarbary, is multimedia artist primarily focused on sculptural installations and painting. Elbarbary is involved in many community initiatives. Including: being an active member of the University of Windsor’s 3D print club, the previous art director for Together We Flourish Youth Collective and a co-art director for the art program in the Bloom Field House a community outreach initiative. Her work has been showcased in private gallery showings as well as publicly exhibited in mural installations in Windsor city.

MARTIN GODIN

Martin Godin’s recent work draws upon his background of growing up in a small mining community in Northern Ontario—where the physicality of manual labour, the expectations of masculine working class identity and sexuality were formative to his self-awareness as an artist. Godin’s work contains samples of nickel ore and disposed slag rock extracted from Sudbury.

Biography
Martin Godin is a multidisciplinary artist currently based in Ottawa. His work was recently featured at the Théâtre Sainte-Catherine in Montréal (ROCKS publication release with Studio Béluga) and at the Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art in Kelowna, British Columbia (Pride and Diversity exhibition). His work has also been exhibited at the Workers Arts and Heritage Museum in Hamilton and at the Steelworkers Gallery 6500 in Sudbury, Ontario.

Artist’s Statement
Disambiguation: the removal of uncertainty or confusion. Cancer, one word, known by all, evokes fear—fear of the unknown. As practitioners, particularly those committing themselves to a life of service, never lose sight of your compassion. For patients, there is always that terrifying uncertainty lurking in the back of the mind: the fine balance between passion for life and fear of death.

Biography
The useless, replaced and decayed propel Mieke’s work. Allowing these objects to tell their own story alongside the artist’s original work produces the final piece. Mieke Herman is a three-dimensional artist living and working in Niagara on the Lake, Ontario.

Artist’s Statement & Biography
WhiteFeather’s political engagement with community-based citizen science and work at the intersection of art and science, stems from a concern with making new technologies accessible to a nonspecialist and public. This DIY and feminist model of collective awareness-raising is part of an activist action to equip individuals with the open knowledge and shared tools necessary to engage in a critical discourse around the cultural impacts of rapid technological advance. One way this is done is through producing open, online technical videos and publications.

WhiteFeather currently works as Technician and Interim Principal Investigator for the Speculative Life Lab, and as Coordinator for the Textiles and Materiality Research Cluster, both situated within the Milieux Institute for Arts, Culture and Technology at Concordia University.

WhiteFeather (MFA) is an artist-researcher and educator currently based in Montreal, Canada. She positions her BioArt practice within the context of craft, via material investigations of the aesthetic and technological potential of bodily and vital materials. WhiteFeather’s current research-creation practice is focused on the material applications of living systems, the haptic intelligence of microorganisms and their interaction with machines. She presents this work within the frameworks of feminism, witchcraft/empathy and nonhuman agency.

Artist’s Statement
This piece is a mixed media/textile representation of a pressure sore, stage IV. I created this piece to bring attention to the fact that pressure sores are largely preventable, with easy, cost effective measures – and yet are devastating and costly to treat after they have formed. Prevention of skin breakdown should be a main priority for all clients, but especially those who are at high risk for skin breakdown— whether it be in the home, or during a hospital stay. The piece is created like medical slides, showing each layer of the flesh involved in the stage IV wound from epidermis to bone. The epidermis is an embroidered map of Paris, whose haphazard streets resemble the lines in our skin. The beads in each layer represent the granulation of the wound. Each layer is created using a different textile technique (such as needle felting, applique, embroidery etc. ).

Biography
Fiona Legg is a mixed media sculptor (previously an occupational therapist) working out of Barrie, Ontario. My focus is primarily on objects, the stories that they can tell, and the emotions or memories that they can elicit.

Artist’s Statement
This painting, One Love, relates to the ICRE theme in that it symbolizes our mutual interdependence and serves as a reminder that beneath the veneer, and regardless of gender, sexual orientation, race, and socio-economic standing, our basic needs are the same.

Biography
Mark Liam Smith is a professional artist whose work has been exhibited internationally, including the SCOPE Basel art fair in Switzerland and galleries in London and NYC. He was recently awarded a 2017 Ontario Arts Council grant for Emerging Artists and has been featured by Hi-Fructose, Booooooom, and Bizarre Beyond Belief Magazine, among others. Mark is represented by Galerie Youn in Montreal, Rouge Gallery in Saskatoon, and 19 Karen Contemporary in the Gold Coast, Australia.

SARAH R. MALEKZADEH
Canada

Artist’s Statement
My closest relationships and my Iranian background often inspire my artwork. This portrait of my grandma is made completely using a stamp of her name, Robabeh Torkzadeh. She carried this stamp to use as her signature, because she was illiterate. This work expresses that each person is an individual made up of thousands of experiences and hardships, and that in medicine people should be treated as individuals, not just as bodies.

Biography
Sarah Malekzadeh is a recent graduate of OCAD University’s Drawing and Painting program. She is primarily an oil painter but enjoys experimenting with creating her own pigments, and using traditional methods such as fresco painting. She is starting her MFA Fine Arts studies at the School of Visual Arts in New York City this fall.

MANDEM survives with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS), a genetic connective tissue disorder. The average EDS patient pursues an accurate diagnosis for 20+ years, their complex cases creating barriers to treatment. Our Hypermobility series portrays models with this oft-overlooked condition.

Respectfully-represented disabled bodies are rare in the art canon. Our classical realist paintings assert the worthiness of such bodies within the realm of fine art — and also acknowledge their need to be recognized by medical professionals.

Biography
MANDEM is a media-fluid artist conglomerate. Their work on disability poetics and the visceral body is in critical dialogue with art history. They can claim an MFA (studio art) and MA (interdisciplinary humanities) from Florida State University, where they received the Florence Teaching Award Fellowship. They recently received an Ohio Arts Council (OAC) Individual Artist Grant for their work on the Hypermobility series, which has exhibited in Italy, England, and the United States. http://MANDEMart.com/hypermobility

Artist’s Statement
As a woman in a specialized surgical discipline (cardiac surgery), I am passionate about advocating for Women in Medicine and supporting and encouraging equity and diversity in health care through the pursuit of multidisciplinary knowledge and practice. In support of all my fellow female colleagues in surgery, I painted “Susie the Surgeon” an acrylic painting based on the World War II poster, “Rosie the Riveter – Yes, We Can!”. This image also features doodles from my Master of Industrial Design thesis research and represents my goal of integrating art, design and medicine.

Biography
Michiko Maruyama is a third year cardiac surgery residency at the University of Alberta. In addition to residency, she is concurrently working towards a Master of Industrial Design degree. Drawing on her unique combination of industrial design, graphic art, and medical training, she aims to create educational resources that facilitate knowledge transfer and communication between physician and child. Inspired by the concept of “learning through play,” Michiko has dedicate her Master of Industrial Design thesis work to the creation of education toys. These educational toys will teach basic cardiac anatomy, introduce medical terminology, discuss the importance of cardiac health and encourage a cardiac healthy lifestyle.

BRADLEY NECYK

Over the past five years, my work focused on patient experience—whether that was my own or someone else’s—and representations of mental illness and trauma. I examine the experiences and narratives people form as their bodies or minds weaken, come under attack, or become altered, and how medical interventions function around and upon them. The work submitted here is from a 2-year project working with Head and Neck Cancer patients. The video linked below is part of a larger video installation that is looking at the patient experience of diagnosis, illness, and recovery. Through art about illness, I believe health professionals will have emotive and embodied experiences of the patient experience, hopefully, developing further their ability to see the ‘whole’ patient; leading to better care.

Biography
I am a Canadian intermedia artist and current Ph.D. student at the University of Alberta in the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry. There I teach art and arts-based approaches to research in Fine Arts, Medicine, and Pharmacy. I have been shown internationally, participate in artists’ residencies, and delivers academic papers internationally. I am a committee member of several professional bodies and am a Scholar at the Integrative Health Institute at the UofA.

Artist’s Statement
This painting, Rosalind Franklin: The Double Helix, looks at Franklin who is best known for her work on the X-ray diffraction images of DNA. Her data, according to Francis Crick, was “the data we actually used” to formulate Crick and Watson’s 1953 hypothesis regarding the structure of DNA. Watson and Crick only vaguely acknowledged her evidence in support of their hypothesis. The possibility of Franklin having played a major role was not revealed until Watson wrote his personal account, The Double Helix, in 1968, which subsequently inspired several people to investigate DNA history and Franklin’s contribution.She died at the age of 37 from complications arising from ovarian cancer and was never awarded the Nobel Prize along with Crick and Watson, as the award was not given posthumously. This painting is watercolour on 300 Lb watercolour paper and 22k gold leaf and is 22″x30″.

Biography
Sharalee Lewis is a Vancouver based artist who is best known for her series “Women of Substance” where she explores the outstanding impact and contributions of women.
My paintings always start with an idea. That idea, when developed, becomes the beginning of a conversation between me, the painting, and its viewers.

SPECTRUM features a digitally-painted skull radiograph. As medical trainees, we discover the diversity of patient experience, here represented by colour (what we see) and the skull interior (patients’ inner lives). The narrowing segments represent decreasing wavelengths of light and the dangers of narrowed perceptions. By focusing on one aspect of the patient (one segment), we miss important details (the remaining segments). As healthcare leaders, trainees must look beyond disease and consider the whole patient.

Biography
My medical illustrations have been published in over ten poster presentations and publications and I recently provided anatomical illustrations and a cover image for a medical textbook. This past year, I also produced diagrams for the UBC Radiology Teaching App, a free app created by the UBC Radiology Department. This fall, I will be entering my third year as a medical student at the University of Alberta.

First and foremost, I’m a nurse of 35 years whose primary role is taking care of patients. Over the years, I have developed a belief that patient care can be regarded as an artform itself. Therefore, all of us who do this work are artists, or have the potential to approach our work in this way – and our craft is healing. By salvaging 28 years worth of plastic medical trash that was used in the care of thousands of patients in the Medical-Surgical ICU at the UH, I saved this trash from being deposited into our oceans and land fills. Together with Toronto artist Artist Vanessa Herman-Landau, we used these material to create a mural that gives meaning to this garbage that was used in providing care. We hope it’s energy and beauty will give all who view it a moment of pause to breathe and be mindful of this moment.

Biographies
Tilda Shalof has been a nurse for 35 years, and counting. She worked for 28 years in the Medical-Surgical Intensive Care Unit at the Toronto General Hospital and is now the Gamma Knife nurse at the Toronto Western Hospital, also of the University Health Network.

Nurse Tilda is also the author of the bestselling A Nurse’s Story – Life, Death, and In-Between in an Intensive Care Unit which has been translated into five languages, in addition to five other books about her life as a nurse.  She created this work of art, which is an homage to the patients and staff of the Medical Surgical ICU at TGH together with Toronto artist and teacher, Vanessa Herman (bio to follow). You can visit Tilda’s website –www.nursetilda.com. Tilda can be reached (and  welcomes being reached) at Tilda@nursetilda.com

Vanessa Herman is a retired high school art teacher from the York Region.  She is an artist who works in a number of media and lives in Toronto.

Artist’s Statement
My research-creation project focuses on how a fine art recontextualization of internal medical scans can positively impact a patient’s sense of identity and agency. I create this work in an intimate collaborative practice with my sister, who is an Asst. Professor of Medical Ethics and has multiple sclerosis. Together we advocate for a more empathetic and holistic healthcare education through the inclusion of the Humanities in medical schools.

Biography
Darian Goldin Stahl is a Printmaker and Bookmaker currently residing in Canada. She is a PhD student in Humanities at Concordia University in Montreal, and was recently awarded Canada’s prestigious Vanier Graduate Scholarship for her research potential. Darian received her MFA in Printmaking from the University of Alberta in 2015, and her BFA in Printmaking at Indiana University Bloomington in 2011.

JANINE STEEPER

Nuclei deals with the concept that all organisms share the same building blocks of DNA. At the microscopic level, these are interchangeable. Playing with scale both the interior and exterior of organisms are referenced, as well as the visible, and non-visible. The individual textures and visuals of the different materials are disseminated into new configurations on the page, celebrating the core similarities of life and how it is continuously reconfigured.

Biography
Janine Steeper is a multidisciplinary artist who explores the intertwining of art and science. She investigates the connection points in the natural world and the possible ramifications of these interactions. Her current work involves observation of the visible and invisible in our biological world and how ambiguity generates opportunity for new cycles of observation, discovery, and questioning. Janine is a graduate from OCAD U specializing in Cross Disciplinary Life Studies.

ROSA VERLOOP

Dutch artist Rosa Verloop (°1965) creates sculptures that appear from primordial depths. Resembling both fetuses and octogenarians, her figures sit at an uncomfortable place in the life cycle between birth and death. Despite the simplicity of her chosen materials, the works appear delicate and ethereal, as if the figures are floating peacefully through a sleepy spirit world. The tan nylon stalkings resemble skin, which the artist folds and bends into a twisted cacophony of wrinkles that give each form a unique, organic structure.

Biography
Rosa has taken part in various group exhibitions including: Summer expo At The Hague Municipal Museum (NL) 2012; Art Festival Watou (B) 2013; Semblance, Red bull House of Art, Detroit (USA), 2016.

Rosa is one of the contributing artists in the book ‘A magazine’ curated by Iris van Herpen (2014). Her sculptures were futured in the music video of Perfum Genius song ‘Die 4 You’ directed by Floria Sigismondi LA (USA) 1997. Rosa was represented by Shoobil Gallery at the Art Fair Belgian Art & Design (1997). She is currently living and working in Tilburg (The Netherlands). Upcoming solo exhibition: December 17, 2017 – Januari 21, 2018 at Shoobil Gallery, Antwerp, (B).

Artist’s Statement
I consider biology as contemporary art practice. My artworks intersect art, science, and medicine through installation, sculpture, painting, and digital imagery. Screened For is a series of larger than life self-portraits. Wearing surgical masks painted with an array of infectious diseases, the portraits are a call for health practitioners—and all viewers—to confront society’s obsessive fear of microbes. They force a consideration of the ways conceptions of infection pervade popular culture, and also how scientific research informs the general public.

Biography
Elaine Whittaker is a Canadian multi-disciplinary artist whose practice is based in installation, sculpture, painting, and digital imagery. Her artworks have been shown in Australia, Ireland, Austria, Italy, South Korea, China, Mexico, US and Canadian exhibitions that encompassed themes of BioArt, water, blood, biotechnology, AIDS, cloning, climate change and infectious disease. She has been an invited participant in residencies, workshops and festivals on science, art and medicine, and a featured artist in books, and in literary, academic, and medical periodicals. She has been a recipient of grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Toronto Arts Council..

TINA WILLGREN

Artist’s Statement
Chiro-hir-amptera is a video based on cut ups and animations of old drawings from the British Museum´s online public domain library.

It depicts a floating world where disjointed skeleton parts continually are being combined into new creatures. I picture it as a mental room where the constant mental and creative processes to re-invent, rebuild and re-explain the world are taking place, and, in connection to the theme of the Body Electric, the basis of change.

Biography
Tina Willgren is a visual artist working primarily with video. She lives and works in Stockholm, Sweden, where she received her MFA at the Royal Institute of Art in 2005. In her videos and installations, she explores the mind and body in relation to the contemporary world. Recent exhibitions and festivals include “Jingled”, Art Center Haihatus, Joutsa, Finland (solo) and the UMW Media Wall, Univiersity of Mary Washington, Fredricksburg, VA, USA.

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