The Moose Jaw Museum & Art Gallery (MJMAG) is holding an Artist's Talk with Gabriela Garcia-Luna tonight at 7 p.m. to discuss her current exhibition Land-Water-Passages, and the event will also function as a reception for co-current exhibition Storied Telling: Performativity & Narrative in Photography, which features the work of six different artists.
“The two exhibitions we have opening are Gabriela’s ... and then the second exhibition is a photography exhibition featuring six artists from across Canada,” said Jennifer McRorie, curator/director of the MJMAG, when the twinned exhibitions opened on February 7th. “It’s called ‘Storied Telling’, and it presents narratives that have an element of storytelling to them, but also an element of performance.”
Artist's Talks and exhibition receptions are usually held when the exhibition opens, but this time the event is almost at the end — Land-Water-Passages and Storied Telling are available to view until April 27.
The reception is free at attend. Learn more at www.mjmag.ca.
Gabriela Garcia-Luna: Land-Water-Passages
"In this body of work, Gabriela García-Luna probes the fleeting and the elusive. Using a blend of digital collage, drawing, mark making, and sculpture, the artist layers photographic images of plants from places she has called home; Saskatchewan and Mexico. The works are not concerned with representing what we consider “reality” but rather with highlighting the intangible, impermanent, and fragile parts of human experience – arguably, the places where existence becomes meaningful.
In speaking of her work, García-Luna offers the notion, “No man ever steps in the same river twice.” Greek philosopher Heraclitus coined that phrase to articulate his theory that nothing is permanent except change. Following that thought, this work welcomes us to look beneath the surface of life’s river and recognize both the seen and the unseeable as we embrace what cannot be held. Though it may seem at odds, the moments that shape our memories – the constant of change – is integral to finding our home places."
Storied Telling: Performativity & Narrative in Photography
This exhibition features work by Catherine Blackburn, Lori Blondeau, Xiao Han, Mariam Magsi, Meryl McMaster, and Laura St. Pierre.
"The exhibition, Storied Telling, features photographic works by Canadian artists, whose images present as lens-based performance. The photographs reflect a performative nature, taken as video stills or documentation of performance art or presented as elaborate figurative compositions within settings that border on the fantastical or are imagined recreations of historic scenarios. In their adornment and positioning within their environments, the subjects of the photographs become powerfully iconographic. The resulting images are rife with story, reflecting diverse narratives that are poetic, political, surreal, spiritual, or perhaps even mythic; stories that inform and speak to cultural and diaspora identities that are constantly producing and reproducing themselves anew through transformation and difference."