Miriam Fabijan | Nesting

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Miriam Fabijan, "Nesting"

Courtesy of the Artist.

This exhibition is part of my research into motherhood, womanhood, and matriarchy via a Slavicand personal lens. I am a first generation Canadian. Both of my parents immigrated from Sloveniato Canada as “displaced persons” after World War 2. As a first generation Canadian, I have felt a constant need to attach myself to my Slovenian heritage, to make sense of my connection and my disconnection to it in an authentic and inquisitive way. Many of the images in this exhibition come from Slovenian lacemaking patterns and lace I have either collected, was gifted, or inherited. By using them as a base, and by applying a variety of editing processes to emphasize a particular narrative, I am actively attaching myself to the creative language of my matrilineal ancestors. The tradition of lacemaking in Slovenia has been preserved and kept alive by mothers teaching daughters. My mother was an avid lacemaker up until a few years ago—she stopped when her eyesight started to fail her, and arthritis crippled her hands. She did not pass the practice down to me, but I gained an appreciation for it by watching her intensely occupy her time with this activity. By examining, replicating, deconstructing, and re-imagining the creation of lace in my artistic practice, I can create my own space to participate in this creative tradition and visual language—nesting myself within it. Within these works are stories and images transcribed into a creative language by their female creators, including the representations of the Slavic goddess Mokoš, aspects of the female body, the stages of womanhood and nature.

Miriam Fabijan is a Calgary-based multimedia artist, writer, and curator. She is a graduate of the University of Calgary (BFA), NSCAD University (MFA), and she was twice an Artist in Residence at the Banff Centre for the Arts. Fabijan has exhibited her artwork extensively across Canada and in Europe, including in Ljubljana, Slovenia in 1992, a year after Slovenia (her ancestral homeland) became an independent country.

Her work can be found in several public and private collections in Canada, the US, and Europe, including the Canada Council Art Bank and the Walter Phillips Gallery for Contemporary Art. She is the recipient of numerous grants from the Canada Council, Calgary Arts Development, Alberta Culture, La Ministère de la Culture du Québec and Slovenska Izseljenska Matica. Fabijan recently contributed a story to campfirekinship.com’s “Landed, Transformative Stories of Canadian Immigrant Women,” published in the summer of 2022. Fabijan’s curatorial projects involve working with, and promoting the artwork of Indigenous, immigrant, emerging and marginalized artists with a focus on art by and about women.

She recently curated the exhibition “Many Gardens” at the Calgary Central Library (August 2022), featuring the artwork of thirteen women artists from various cultural and creative backgrounds. Her next curatorial project “In Full Bloom, a celebration of artwork by and about women” will be at the ATB Branch for Art + Culture, 8th Avenue, Calgary (January-March 2023). Fabijan’s artwork is auto ethnographic. Her research and creative explorations are founded in her cultural heritage, personal narratives, self-reflection, and social insights. Her search for a sense of place, lineage, voice, language, and identity are central to her artwork.