May 18, 2018 – August 19, 2018
Opening Reception and Curator Talk: Friday, May 18, 2018, 6-8 pm. Free and open to the public.
Exhibition Symposium: “Undergoing FLUX: Art-Medicine Collaborative Praxis:” Saturday, May 19, 2018, 10:30am- 3pm. Panel presentations followed by guided tour. Advanced registration required, tickets $17. Register
Artists:
Brad Necyk
Heather Huston
Ingrid Bachmann
Jill Ho-You
Jude Griebel
Sean Caulfield
Curated by Lianne McTavish
FLUX: Responding to Head and Neck Cancer features the work of artists dedicated to exploring, representing, and recreating the stories, experiences, and embodied knowledge of people recovering from head and neck cancer. Sean Caulfield, Ingrid Bachmann, Jude Griebel, Jill Ho-You, Heather Huston and Brad Necyk thoughtfully and imaginatively provide new ways to think about and understand head and neck cancer, without attempting to simplify or sanitize this disease and its impact. The term “flux” refers to a flow that is unmanageable – but also cleansing – alluding both to the experience of cancer, and its treatment. This collaborative, interdisciplinary, and interactive exhibition shows that human bodies are enduring and malleable, subject to disaster but also to repair.
Since 2015, artists, researchers and health care providers have been listening to, learning from, and collaborating with people whose lives have been impacted by head and neck cancer. Our collective journey through a series of workshops, interviews, personal meetings, and group studio visits built the social and intellectual foundations for our ambitious project called see me, hear me, heal me … Exploring patients’ experiences of head and neck cancer, developed by an interdisciplinary group of scholars, led by Minn Yoon (Dentistry), with Pamela Brett-MacLean (Arts & Humanities in Health &Medicine; Psychiatry), Sean Caulfied (Art & Design), Lianne McTavish (Art & Design), Helen Vallianatos (Anthropology), Suresh Nayar (Surgery), Jana Rieger (Rehabilitation Medicine), and Brad Necyk (Psychiatry), all at the University of Alberta [www.seemehearmehealme.com]. Ongoing research has featured analysis of patient narratives, and public presentations at local and international conferences, as well as the exhibition FLUX: Responding to Head and Neck Cancer at the International Museum of Surgical Science.
Ingrid Bachmann is an interdisciplinary artist who explores the complicated relationship between the material and virtual realms. Bachmann uses redundant as well as new technologies to create generative and interactive artworks, many of which are site-specific. She has exhibited her work nationally and internationally in exhibitions and festivals in Canada, Europe, the United States, Asia, and Latin America including the 11th Havana Biennal (2012), Manifestation International d’art 6, Quebec (2012), Lab 30, Augsburg (2010), and the Southern Alberta Art Gallery (2010). Bachmann is the co-editor of Material Matters (YYZ Books, 1998, 1999, 2011) and has contributed essays to several anthologies and periodicals including The Object of Labor, MIT Press (2007). She has given invited talks at such venues as the Banff Center for the Arts, ISEA (The International Symposium of Electronic Arts), Goldsmiths College (University of London), University of Wollongong, Australia, and the University of Maryland at Baltimore, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, among others. Bachmann is Associate Professor and Graduate Program Director in the Studio Arts Department at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. She is also a founding member of Hexagram: Institute for Research and Creation in the Media Arts and is the Director of the Institute of Everyday Life.
Sean Caulfield is a Centennial Professor in the Department of Art and Design at the University of Alberta. He has exhibited his prints, drawings and artist’s books extensively throughout Canada, the United States, Europe, and Japan. Recent exhibitions include: The Flood, Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton; Firedamp, dc3 Art Projects, Edmonton; The Body in Question(s), UQAM Gallery, Montreal; Perceptions of Promise, Chelsea Art Museum, New York, USA/Glenbow Museum, Calgary, Alberta; The New World, The Centre for Modern and Contemporary Art, Debrecen, Hungary. Caulfield has received numerous grants and awards for his work including: The Special Award of the Rector of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, Krakow Triennial, 2015; SSHRC Dissemination Grant: Canadian Stem Cell Network Impact Grant; SSHRC Fine Arts Creation Grant; Canada Council Travel Grant; and a Visual Arts Fellowship, Illinois Arts Council, Illinois, USA. Caulfield’s work is in various public and private collections including: Houghton Library, Harvard University, USA; Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, England; Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas, Austin, Texas, USA.
Jude Griebel’s sculptural work is driven by themes of psychological unease and transformation. Depicting bodies in various states of composition, it examines how our imagination negotiates abstract notions such as growth, consumption and mortality through metaphorical and experiential avenues. His work has recently been presented at Galerie Sturm, Nuremberg, The Spinnerei, Leipzig, The Redpath Museum, Montreal, and in Future Station: The 2015 Alberta Biennial of Contemporary Art at the Art Gallery of Alberta. Griebel was a 2015 artist in residence at Halle 14 Center for Contemporary Art, Leipzig, and was awarded the inaugural Alberta Foundation for the Arts residency at the International Studio and Curatorial Program in Brooklyn. His projects have been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and he is a two-time recipient of the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation grant for international emerging artists.
Jill Ho-You is an artist and sessional instructor at the University of Alberta and Alberta College of Art and Design. Her practice examines the parallels between the landscape, built environment and the human body. Her drawings, prints and installations have been exhibited nationally and internationally, including solo exhibitions at SNAP in Edmonton (2016) and the University of the Arts in Philadelphia (2011.) She has also shown in group exhibitions such as the International Print Center New York (2013), the 3rd Bangkok Triennial International Print and Drawing Exhibition (2012) and the 2nd Grand River International Printmaking Exhibition, ROC (2015.) She was the recipient of the Prix Public from the Biennale Internationale d’estampe Contemporaine de Trois-Rivières (2013) and has participated in residencies at Open Studio in Toronto, ON and St. Michael’s Printshop in St. John’s, NL.
Heather Huston holds an MFA from the University of Alberta and teaches Print Media at the Alberta College of Art and Design where she is currently the Associate Chair of the School of Visual Art. She has had several solo exhibitions within Canada including The Body, Stranger at the Vernon Public Art Gallery and Shift at SNAP Gallery in Edmonton. Her exhibition Dream City, Dreams has been touring through Serbia and Montenegro for the past year. She has exhibited widely in international group exhibitions that recently include Kyoto Hanga, Printing Marks and Codes (Chongqing), Inkmasters 2016 (Australia), and Di CARTA/PAPERMADE (Italy). Her work is in the collection of over fifteen major institutions including Purdue University Galleries, Crvena Komuna (Montenegro), the Arkansas State University Permanent Collection of Art, and the City of Burnaby Permanent Art Collection.
Brad Necyk is a Canadian visual artist working through the mediums of drawing, photography, video, film, sculpture, and performance. He was recently an Artist in Residence with the Friends of the University Hospitals and Transplant Services Alberta Health Services (2015-16). Necyk’s current work focuses on patient experience, auto-ethnography, psychiatry, pharmaceutics, and biopolitics. His artwork has been exhibited internationally, including the 2015 Alberta Biennial, and he regularly participates in artists’ residencies, delivers academic papers internationally, and serves as a committee member on professional bodies. Currently a PhD candidate in Psychiatry, Necyk is also a Scholar in the Integrative Health Institute at the University of Alberta. He offers senior-level courses in Drawing and Intermedia at both the University of Alberta and MacEwan University
Pamela Brett-MacLean (PhD) is an associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Alberta . She is committed to fostering humanism and professionalism in medicine. As director of the Arts & Humanities in Health & Medicine (AHHM) Program in the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry (FoMD), she has been involved in leading and contributing to a wide range of innovative research, teaching and learning initiatives informed by relational, arts-based and reflective approaches. Pamela has widely presented on her work, and has authored numerous articles and texts, including “Keeping Reflection Fresh: A practical guide for clinical educators” (2016) a book she co-edited with Allan Peterkin published by The Kent State University Press. She is currently collaborat ing with Peterkin and others to establish the Canadian Association for Health Humanities.
Minn Yoon (PhD) is an assistant professor with the School of Dentistry at the University of Alberta. Her primary research focus is on improving oral health and care for vulnerable populations. She is leading the study “see me, hear me, heal me”, which aims to transform our understanding of head and neck cancer patient and family illness experiences. She is committed to not only enhancing awareness of head and neck cancer, but also integrating this commitment into educational curricula that honors people and their individual experiences.
Lianne McTavish (PhD) is Professor in the History of Art, Design, and Visual Culture. Lianne has received four research grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, as well as grants from the Killam Research Fund and Hannah Institute for the History of Medicine. Her interdisciplinary research—informed by her graduate degrees in Visual and Cultural Studies—has centered on early modern French medical imagery and the history of museums. She has published three monographs, including, Defining the Modern Museum (University of Toronto Press, 2013). Lianne is currently completing two more books, one of which will feature analyses of King Louis XIV’s famous anal surgery of 1687, the embodied experience of tapeworms, and changing nature of fetal imagery during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. An associate curator at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery from 2003–2007, Lianne continues to curate and write catalogues for exhibitions of contemporary art, especially those featuring themes of embodiment and medical imaging.
Partial sponsorship is provided by the Institute for Reconstructive Sciences in Medicine.
This program is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency.
Header Image: Heather Huston, I am Wearing Clothes but I am Naked, 2016.