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“Prospicience:” the act of looking forward, foresight, or the ability to anticipate future events and needs. The work pulled together for this exhibition under the umbrella of this title refers to both the act of hopeful looking towards the future and the big and small acts we perform in the hopes of it bringing good luck our way, but also of the habit of trying to anticipate and fulfill the needs and wants of others before one’s own. VanStarkenburg’s work typically delves into the lives of girls and women and pulls out strange tableaus of them busily doing things: taking medicine, making notes, building human pyramids, counting bodies, dowsing for water, riding horses… there is no end to things they do. What they have in common is that they are all acts of survival: physical and psychological acts to stay alive and stay safe. The figures are in fight or flight mode, but also fawning or playing dead. They are also pretending at decorum so they can secretly get on with their important work.Vernissage: Friday October 30th.
Time: 6:00-9:00
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Sharon VanStarkenburg is a professional artist and scholar currently working towards a PhD in Cultural Mediations and a Graduate Diploma in Curatorial Studies at Carleton University. She holds an MFA and an MA in Contemporary Art Theory and is a part-time professor. VanStarkenburg's work addresses psychological and physical transformations, both actual and metaphorical, often combining the two. Her work straddles representational and gestural, giving viewers a visual anchor while also taking them with her into unreal spaces. She is particularly interested in the resultant distortions of the coercive pressures of girlhood, and the effects of being "othered." She identifies tropes of Western white girlhood and womanhood so that she may deconstruct and parody them to reveal their fallacies or exaggerations. She pulls at the threads of normative femininity, body policing, and the acculturation into desiring and being desirable.
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Event venue
Patrick Gordon Framing, 164 Elm St W, Ottawa, ON K1R 6N5, Canada
Tickets
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