CRIPTYCH
Susan Aydan Abbott | Yvette Cenerini | Andrea von Wichert | Susan Lamberd
March 6 – April 5 2020 | Poolside Gallery | The Output
Opening reception: 6pm Friday March 6th, 2020
Performance by Andrea von Wichert at 7:30pm:
TRIGGER WARNING: SATAN (the devil made me do it).
CRIPTYCH showcases a year of intensive project development from members of the DATA program, a collaboration between Arts AccessAbility Network Manitoba and Video Pool Media Arts. This exhibition confronts outdated modes of therapy, unearths skeletons in the mental health care system, explores inner worlds of digitally-mediated self-examination and negotiates boundaries between vulnerable states of dependence, dis/ability and agency. The artists in CRIPTYCH take extraordinary lengths to share their experiences through these profoundly personal artworks.
The Diversity through Access to Technology + Art program (DATA) provides mentorship, education and career development opportunities to artists with disabilities who are interested in incorporating technology into their arts practice.
Susan Aydan Abbott – S.O.W. (SHOCK OF WOMAN)
S.O.W. is a sculptural representation of a pregnant woman/pig strapped down for electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), aka shock treatment. First used in the 1930s as a means of subduing pigs for slaughter and more rampantly used on women, this treatment is both profoundly humiliating and barbaric: twin elements describing methods of physical and psychological torture. Inviting viewers to witness the procedure, its sensor driven flickering fluorescent lights and bizarre noises, the piece mimics my detachment to self – a dissociation through trauma, where the ‘cure’ is much worse than the disease. It is my contention that the treatment aggravated my difficulties, deepened my isolation and compounded my fears, further exposing my vulnerability.
While psychiatrists claim modern Electroshock is less brutal than it was in the past when patients used to break bones from the violent convulsions it triggered, the voltage and amperage in ECT is in fact higher than it used to be. The addition of a muscle relaxant makes it appear less brutal. But it’s not. How can it be that this medical treatment is still practised when it has been banned as a form of torture?
Susan Aydan Abbott: Winnipeg artist Abbott creates deeply personal works using photography, sculpture, film and installations which speak to memory, resilience, trauma violence and survival. Using silicone casts of her body and face, her work links the architecture and landscape with her own personal history as she directly transfers the pain of her experiences against and into her own environment. Abbott has shown in solo, group shows locally and nationally as well as attended residencies in Hamilton Ontario (Center3) and Feminist art Collective in Toronto. Her work was spotlighted on Canada Council website in 2018. She has received numerous grants to complete a body work on an abandoned Mental Asylum (BOOBY HATCH (WO)MANIFESTO: a Feminine Perspective of Century Manor). Recent exhibitions include Not the Camera, But the Filing Cabinet: Performative Body Archives in Contemporary Art at Gallery 1c03 at University of Winnipeg and the Window Gallery and Narrative Healing: Feminst Art Fest at Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD) in Toronto.She is currently enrolled in the Diversity through access to Technology And Art program(DATA) at Video Pool Media Arts Centre where she is expanding her practice with new learnt technologies.
Yvette Cenerini (née Lagimodière) – Technical Support / Soutien technique
Paralysis begets dependance. Technical Assistance is a self-portrait intended to externalize lived experience stemming from the incessant dependance on machines and others for survival. It simultaneously embodies feelings of gratefulness (for the help) and resentment (for the need for help). By exposing this vulnerability I wish to facilitate meaningful dialogue surrounding the interconnectedness of disability and social engagement.A remote control empowers the viewer to assume their role in what is the collective responsibility of caring for community members living with disabilities. Helplessness is emphasized by the conceding of control over my limbs to the viewer who must consider whether to help, hinder, or look away.
Yvette Cenerini (née Lagimodière) is a francophone Métis visual artist from Manitoba who lives and works in Winnipeg. Prior to obtaining a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Manitoba in 2010, she completed a Bachelor of Education and taught art for 5 years to middle and junior year students. Keen on zoology and psychology, thus human and animal behaviors, the complexity and intimacy of intra- and inter-specific relationships are recurring themes throughout her work in photomontage. Her new series of work created as a mentee in the Diversity through Access to Technology + Art Mentorship Program has her experimenting with the amalgamation of digital collage and Media Arts.
Andrea von Wichert – TRIGGER WARNING: SATAN (the devil made me do it)
This is the second of a series of performance experiments exploring the relationship between culture and individual bio-destiny in the development and management of those non-adaptive character traits known collectively as “personality disorder.” Destined to become an abomination in the eyes of her family, our hero dissects memories of fundamentalist indoctrination, demons in the bedroom and a popular culture moral panic to chart a personal course of discomfort through the violence inherent in patriarchy, discovering the evil one lurking in the history of mental health care in Manitoba. (not for the easily upset, offended, triggered, or for children)
Andrea von Wichert is a Winnipeg performer/writer/visual artist. A self-identified clown who often explores abjection as identity (to her own detriment,) she often muses in her work on the failure to meet culturally-defined expectations on a consistent and chronic basis.
Susan Lamberd – DisRuption/InterRuption
MS symptoms can be benign. And then they can turn deadly.
For this project, I used MRI scans of my brain to produce two sculptures that show (allude to) the disruptions and interruptions that are generated by MS plaques on the brain. Digital prints of MRI scans onto which have been sewn MS plaques/axons are strung on IV poles. Monitors display 3-D rendered brain activity and symptoms experienced. Individual masks of my face will be trying to say something…
Susan Lamberd: A multi-disciplinary artist interested in challenging the preconceived notions of what an artist with a disability can create, Lamberd uses the body as the main theme of her work. Diverse media communicate ideas of access in the arts, reject the view of disability that convectional artists have maintained, and aid in discovering radical new ways in which to express these beliefs.
In collaboration with:
Funded by:
Mentees:
Andrea von Wichert | Susan Aydan Abbott | Yvette Cenerini | Susan Lamberd
Mentors:
Reva Stone | Ken Gregory | Helga Jakobson | Erika Lincoln