Dissecting Identities

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Art Gallery of Grande Prairie, "Dissecting Identities," 2022

Dissecting Identities features six artists from across Canada who work with a variety of mediums including painting, print, sculpture, new media, and Virtual Reality installations that examine the construction and deconstruction of identities in contemporary society. Through a demonstration of mixed mediums and artistic approaches that manipulate images, objects, and forms, the artworks explore themes that address the self and the blurring lines between digital, psychological, and physical spaces.

Entering the digital space through a combination of new technologies and printmaking, Marilène Oliver investigates digitized selves within the virtual world, overlapping realms of reality and virtual reality. Moving into the natural world, Paddy Lamb‘s installation engages with ideas around land, migration, and distorted memories. While the usage of natural materials presents different fragments of the self through installations by Rebekah Miller who examines the relationship between clothing and skin as a representation of one’s identity, and Haley Bassett who explores the loss of Métis identity through appropriation, commodification, and assimilation within society. Anna Williams uses sculpture as a social practice that addresses female identities and mental health, and paintings by Cara Guri investigate self-image as an extended object in portraiture. The artworks offer narratives that propose alternate realities that ask viewers to look within themselves and explore a deeper understanding on what constitutes their own identities.

Exploring themes around gender and identity, body and land, memory and place, the exhibition invites us to reflect on what defines each one of us and our relationships to the ever-changing world around us. Dissecting Identities aims to create space for reflection on how these topics impact us emotionally and physically, opening conversations around deconstructing our evolving identities within the natural and digital world.

Curated by Manar Abo Touk, Curator, Exhibitions & Collections