Hannah Doucet: I wondered when my body would deflate

×

Expand

Hannah Doucet, "I wondered when my body would deflate," 2018

installation view

I wondered when my body would deflate

Every time she had a procedure she picked out a pencil as a prize. The size of her collection made visible the enormity of the illness. They joked that when they turned their backs she would sometimes stuff her pockets with more, an act of defiance in the face of something so imperceptibly large. 

When I was eight and my hair was falling out I asked my dad if he would shave my head. He remembers this moment with vivid and painful detail. I do not remember the experience of him shaving my head. I don’t even remember asking him to do it. But I do remember not having hair. I remember the sense of loss and I remember longing for it. Afterwards, my hair was never long enough—a subconscious yet visible refusal of illness. 

Through video, photography and sculpture I wondered when my body would deflate explores our relationship with our changing bodies within the context of illness. Specifically exploring hair as a site of strong emotive significance, the work contemplates the contradictions that exist within the societal constructions of hair and health. The exhibition highlights subtle, poetic and futile gestures of resistance to illness, while simultaneously wrestling with enduring bodily anxieties and complete lack of control.

ABOUT THE ARTISTHannah Doucet is a photo-based artist and arts educator from Winnipeg, Canada. She received her BFA Honours from the University of Manitoba in 2015. She has exhibited in alternative spaces and artist-run centers throughout the city of Winnipeg. She has exhibited nationally, at Art Mur (Montreal) and Avenue (Vancouver), Proof 23 at Gallery 44 (Toronto) and, most notably a solo exhibition I Never Recognized Her Except in Fragments at The New Gallery (Calgary) in 2016. In 2017 she completed a residency as part the Banff Centre for Art and Creativity’s Visual + Digital Emerging BAiR Program as well as a six week residency as Mikw Chiyâm’s artist in residence at Wiinibekuu high school in Waskaganish, QC. She is a co-founder of Flux Gallery and co-founder and active member of Blinkers Art and Project Space.