CALL ME HYSTERICAL

1500 Portraits, 2 x 2 in., acrylic on canvas boards, 2014-2019.

This project began as a personal challenge, for me, to paint approximately 1500 portraits from the Who’s Who in Canada publication from 1977-78. In that way, it is a re-presentation of copy-right protected visual material.  It morphed into memories of my being a teen in the 70s. In my experience, the narrative for women’s subjectivity was enmeshed with men’s, whose were considered universal. This notion was actively being contested by feminists in the USA from the 1960s onwards, which influenced young women, such as me, in Southern Ontario, Canada.

In 2013, a friend sent me a volume of the Who’s Who in Canada (1977-78) she picked up at a thrift store on the West Coast of Canada where she lived, thinking it would interest me. I took it with me when I worked as an Art Teacher and lived in Slovakia, 2013-2017. It became a painting project, completed over 5 years. The project traveled with me to Ontario, Canada, for summers, and was completed in Ontario.

It has taken different forms of installation.