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.  Women’s subjectivity was enmeshed with men’s, considered universal, and contested by feminists in the USA from the 1960s onwards, which influenced young women, such as me, in Southern Ontario, Canada.

 

 

A friend sent me the Who’s Who in Canada volume she picked up at a thrift store on the West Coast, thinking it would interest me. I took it with me when I worked as a 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.

Installed at the Ontario Shores 100 years of Service Art Exhibit, 2014.
Installed at Ontario Shores 100 Years of Service Art Exhibit, 2014
Call Me Hysterical, installed at Ontario Shores 100 Years of Service Art Exhibit, 2014.