Opening Reception: NEUROCRAFT

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Dana Kletke, "Blood Clots," nd

mixed media

Opening Reception: Friday, March 2, 5 - 9 pm

Artists: ash alberg, Dana Kletke, Heather Komus, Chantel Mierau, Lesley Nakonechny, Ann Stinner, Gaëtanne Sylvester, Peter Tittenberger, Michelle Wilson.

Neuroscientists: Dr. Melanie Martin, Dr. Tiina Kauppinen, Dr. Kristine Cowley, Dr. Jerry Krcek, Dr. Mike Jackson, Dr. Tabrez Siddiqui, Dr. Eftekhar Eftekharpour, Dr. Gilbert Kirouac, Dr. Marc Del Bigio. 

Curated by Seema Goel

What is Neurocraft?

Neurocraft surfaced from the subconscious of the Manitoba Neuroscience Network as part of its initiative to bring neuroscience to the public without the heavy garments of scientific jargon and reams of data. The scientists were looking for visual storytellers who could angle a mirror on neuroscience, what it is, their research, their zeal for the discipline, and then simply let other people look, allowing an intermingling of reflections. While neuroscience and craft appear wholly unconnected, their choice to yoke themselves to the intimate materials of daily life was insightful. Craft, after all, is rooted in the tactile and familiar; it pulls on desire and reveals narratives in sideways processes rather than through direct expository. It reinforces a larger culture but retains personal meaning. Much like neuroscience, it’s the ultimate personal and ubiquitous arena.

Most of the artists and scientists in this project have a personal connection to the research subject matter. Their interests rise out of their own stories. The artists in this show pull at the runaway threads of fear and anxiety, retrace the identities of those blurred by Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, reveal intimate meditations on the loss of a child and the mortality of a parent, revel in the wondrous patterns and imagery of the brain in the everyday, and ask us to navigate the darkness of a tangled mind and put our tremulous fingers on the precise points we cannot touch.

Artists and scientists both work to try to make sense of things, to find rhythms and patterns, and from these create narratives of experience, and draw conclusions. They are very different, but they come from the same place; the place of questions.- Seema Goel Curator, Neurocraft