Two new exhibitions opened at the Estevan Art Gallery and Museum (EAGM) on Friday.
These exhibitions featuring on Saskatchewan and one Ontario artists will run from Jan. 29 – April 4.
Otherworldly Abundance by Zoë Schneider is being showcased in Gallery 1.
Zoë Schneider holds an MFA from the University of Saskatchewan (2018), and a BFA from the Alberta University of the Arts, formerly ACAD (2009) and is based in Regina.
Working in sculpture and installation to critically examine the complexity of fat identity, Schneider considers topics including the expanding body, the body under restriction and surveillance, obsession in diet culture, the medical industry and the fat body, inherited food values, and societal confusion around food.
Otherworldly Abundance is an immersive exhibition that reorients concepts of fatness, the grotesque and extraterrestrial worlds. Imagery of carbohydrates, like bread and potato chips, complicate ideas of fatness, food, and the modern-day understanding of the word grotesque by situating the viewer inside an abundance of nourishment. Micro and macro worlds echo each other, inviting the viewer into a pastel hued world of Candyland meets gingerbread house.
The other exhibition, Wound Care by Cindy Stelmackowich, is displayed in Gallery 2.
Born in Melville in 1967, Cindy Stelmackowich studied both art and science at the University of Saskatchewan due to her interest in both disciplines and their inter-connections. She moved to Ottawa to do a master’s degree and continues to live there and teach courses at Carleton University.
Stelmackowich completed a PhD in the history of art and science in New York state and has conducted research in medical and science archives across Europe. Her work as a researcher, writer and curator compliments her artistic pursuits. Her artworks are in a number of municipal, university and national art collections, including the Canada Council Art Bank.
The artist thanked the Ontario Arts Council and the City of Ottawa for their funding support.
“My art practice has centered on long-standing concerns related to the human body as a site of fragility, mortality and memory. This exhibition has been inspired by my growing collection of old medical books, mannequins and anatomical artifacts.
“After studying the bright colors on the edges of pages in old medical books, I began working from the observation that the interior of the body was evident in both the outside of the books as well as inside. I wet and re-formed these red, pink and yellow colored pages into new medical paper sculptures.
“In each distinct piece I experimented with the pages to create intricate cross-sections of flesh; sculpting, stacking and entangling the paper forms, juxtaposing flesh-like colors. Informed by our human relationship to health and wound care, I then tended to these dissected, bruised and scraped sculptural bodily parts: they have been bandaged, braced and held in place by plaster casts, muscle tape and metal medical splints.
“This exhibition suggests we can connect looking inward as a way to expand our perception of the world and the humanity that is around us,”- says Cindy Stelmackowich in her artist statement.
Due to COVID gathering restrictions, there was be no public reception for these exhibitions, but the EAGM is free to visit and is open to the public Monday-Friday, 10 a.m.-6 p.m. and closed for lunch from 12-1 p.m.
