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Browsing Visual Arts by Subject "Aesthetics"
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Item Open Access Al Lado, Afuera. // Beside, Outside.: The Performance of Solidarity between Archive and Repertoire in Guatemala and Canada(2018-11-21) Heyn-Jones, Zoe Amelia; Marchessault, Janine MicheleMy research-creation dissertation investigates the question 'how are human rights enacted/performed? by examining solidarity activism in Guatemala and the hemispheric networks that enable it. The essay film al lado, afuera. // beside, outside. (2018, 21:12 min.), a synthesis of interviews with contemporary activists looks at human rights accompanimentthe process of situating oneself as an unarmed volunteer, assuming a physical presence alongside social activists who are victims of political threats, in order to dissuade violence, bear witness, and activate international solidarity networks. The performatic repertoire of accompaniment activism is explored upon the backdrop of the LAWG (Latin American Working Group)s collection of solidarity documents (1965-1997) and a large wall drawing that maps my research on networks of solidarity activism, thereby contextualizing this little-known embodied activist practice and exploring entanglements between the material archive and the ephemeral repertoire. Solidarity movement ephemera and a series of posters, created from graphic and textual elements of selected LAWG documents, highlight the material and historical foundation of todays accompaniment activism in Guatemala. By continuing to scan these documents in the gallery space as a durational performance throughout the exhibition, I highlight the labour performed in solidarity activism, and the change-of-state from paper materials to digital files, thereby mirroring of the trajectory from pre-Internet campaigns of letter-writing, information bulletins, flyers and posters, etcetera to todays digital forms of solidarity mobilization, and the various temporalities of solidarity. In transforming the collection from a material to a digital archive, I am creating an open source online repository of these crucial materials, as well as a gallery installation that highlights the aesthetics and materiality of pre-Internet solidarity activism, posing the question how does the materiality of solidarity evidenced in the LAWG collection work in tandem with embodied performances of solidarity activism?Item Open Access Excavating Artiface(2014-07-09) Clyne, Amanda Joy; Armstrong, David ScottWe are all image-makers, whether in paint, pixels or persona, and every image contains a vulnerability and resistance to exposure. Inevitably, the acts of looking at and making images lead to a kind of erotic pathos. Seduced by the ornamental skins of images and individuals, we seek bonds of emotion and empathy in external artifice. But while these skins provide clues as to what may lie beneath the surface, they ultimately conceal more than they reveal. Inspired by portraiture, couture and the history of painting, I look to images where artifice reigns, in the historical portraits and contemporary fashion photographs that feign perfection. In the studio, I provoke their metamorphosis through experimental processes and hybrid modes of image making to excavate their artifice. The resulting works are portraits of portraits that dismantle the spectacle of image-making, and reflect the fragile nature of seeing and being seen.Item Open Access Fire+Words: The Geography of Depression(2021-03-08) Gauthier, Catherine; Jones, Janet A.The topics of violence, feminism and depression are discussed as they all have an integral part in the artists practice as an abstract painter. A portfolio of my art practice has been included to exemplify and to support the idea that fragmentation is both a result and a consequence of living in a world that is no longer solid but liquid, as per the thoughts of sociologist Zigmund Bauman. Some key points of Gestalt psychotherapy are used to describe and explain the experience of depression in conjunction with the creative practice of feminist collage work, abstract painting and other creative practices such as poetry. Some causes of depression are discussed using the landscape of the art world to a womans inner and outer worlds experience. Ultimately, the thesis invites us to choose to engage mental health issues not by using the subtle code of discretion of Slavoj iek, that is language and alienation but by re-inhabiting the geography of our existence, re-sensitizing the body with the presence of the other person and with great anticipation.Item Open Access It Will Come Like a Wave(2018-08-27) Sunatori, Veronique Michele; Lau, Yam K.In an effort to understand the meaning of things, my art practice is concerned with the potential for spaces to apprehend individuality through the experience of introspection by way of entering and discovering a foreign landscape. This paper explores my theoretical and practice- based research which focuses on the garden as a place that is conducive to a stillness and contemplation. A state that can lead to meditation or imagination through its muted aesthetics, material reverence, dream-likeness and subtle cultural references. The exhibition It Will Come Like a Wave is the result of my MFA in Visual Arts thesis research. Per the installation conceiving of moments of water dripping and pooling, plant life emerging from the seams and earthy formations that possess a history, I investigate how direct experiences of place allow the viewer to establish our vulnerability as human beings and even cultivate moral sensibility.Item Open Access Landscapes of the Hinged Trunk: With Seams of Glass and Bone(2016-09-20) Coulombe, Derek Victor; Balfour, BarbaraThis thesis engages the construction of a particular kind of artwork, namely an artwork that functions as an occult device, capable of affecting the physical body of the viewer as well as the space the artwork occupies. The procedure described is a process of searching out and defining the formal, aesthetic, affective, and theoretical parameters inherent to the production of such a picture. The methods outlined reflect these defined elements, speaking to issues of materiality as they relate to the eventual dispatch of esoteric affects. The results described here and referred to in the text are a series of artworks that embody the tenets of the research carried out. These works are material, phenomenologically perceptible objects that elicit affect from physical bodies. The conclusion of these results is the definition of a model; it is the construction of a pictorial device capable of projecting immaterial transmissions.Item Open Access Re-working(2015-08-28) Thomas, L. Frances; Jones, Janet A.The thesis Re-working explores the concepts of affect, constant change, the unfinished and undefined, and the ineptness of representation. It is a reflection and contemplation on the ontology of painting and the ongoing and undeniable allusive force of the abstract image as evidenced by the continued liveliness of, and interest in, the painting medium. My choice of the title Re-working speaks to the editing and revisions necessary in the process of realizing an image. At the same time I am inferring a larger and more encompassing sense of functioning and being in the world. It is the case that self and identity, the natural world, relationships and existence itself, are always in a constant state of flux, re-working and adaptation in the causes of renewal and sustainability.Item Open Access Shaper(2022-08-08) Coulombe, Derek Victor; Balfour, BarbaraThis work is a cross-genre memoir that draws upon critical disability theory, literature, images and theoretical discourse in order to examine, express, and critically expand upon my experience of living within the confines of a body and mind conditioned by severe Tourette's Syndrome and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. This work is structured around intermittent descriptions of each of the nineteen tics that form the 'repertoire' of my condition. Interspersed between these nineteen descriptions are brief pieces of writing that span memoir, theoretical writing, and fiction. This work may be of interest to those seeking material on critical disability, illness and life writing, photography, autobiography and memoir, speculative fiction, and visual art.