GALLERY 881
881 East Hastings Street
Vancouver, BC
Canada V6A 3Y1
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The Heart is Not a Well, It Is a Fountain Exhibition
Exhibition with works by artist Monika Wiatrowska. Curated by Alejandro A. Barbosa.
Exhibition
August 8 - August 30, 2024
Opening Reception
Friday, August 9, 2024 from 6 - 9pm
Artist Talk
Monika Wiatrowska in conversation with Alex Waber
Saturday, August 17, 2024, 2 - 3pm
EXHIBITION STATEMENT
The Heart Is Not a Well, It Is a Fountain presents a selection of Monika Wiatrowska's still life works, including pieces produced in collaboration with artist Alex Waber.
The exhibition focuses on the artist's photographic practice and includes staged and unstaged works on fabric and paper. These works express the artist's interest in the representation of the absent body, beauty, banality, the relationship of objects with intimacy and memory, the passage of time, decay, the domestication of organic and synthetic materials, and the codification of natural and artificial light in contemporary photographic imagery.
Wiatrowska's tableaux formalize her desire to translate multisensorial and cognitive experiences into images, and much of her work originates in her writing practice. Her observations of sensory experiences are repurposed toward her visual work by transferring her impressions to the construction of her still lifes.
The central work in the show, F*ck Everlasting, originated in Wiatrowska and Waber's intention of challenging the still life's typical stasis, embracing the artifice of expressing temporality via photographic imagery. In contrast to the full control provided by a studio setting, the work is arranged and photographed outdoors where accidents, decay, shifts in lighting, and the progression of time are all equal participants in a setting where non-human bodies and forms coalesce with what is domesticated and human-made.
ARTIST BIO
Monika Wiatrowska is a Vancouver-based artist, originally from New Hampshire, US. She holds a B.A in Cultural Anthropology from the University of British Columbia; and a M.S in Design Strategy and Management from Parsons School of Design, The New School . Monika started out professionally as a print graphic designer, later moving on to art/creative direction and production. She has art directed for Sad Magazine and Montreal-based Maisonneuve Magazine. Monika began working full-time as a freelance stylist, art director and photographer in 2020.
Monika’s photographic work examines sensing/sensuality, and their necessity as expressed through appreciation of the natural world and the design and histories of objects—from the personal realm, to the social, and anthropological. Her still lifes extend this exploration to personal possessions and human-made objects re-contextualised with natural materials and flora. Music and design are her other energetic outlets, as well as experimental spaces to further translate the world of her visual art.
CURATOR BIO
Alejandro A. Barbosa (they/he) is an HIV-negative queer latinx visual artist born in Argentina who lives and works on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples—the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations—in what is known as Canada. Alejandro’s curatorial practice focuses on lens-based media and revolves around questions on the political potential of the photo-based exhibition as a cultural form, the intersection of photography and family histories, and the ever-shifting relationship of the photographic image with violence. They hold an MFA in visual art from the University of British Columbia, and a BFA in photography from Concordia University. Alejandro’s curatorial projects have been exhibited in Argentina and Canada.