ART NOW - Mandy Espezel Speaks March 20th, 2015 at Noon at the Trianon Gallery

This event is from the archives of The Notice Board. The event has already taken place and the information contained in this post may no longer be relevant or accurate.

Based in an intuitive, material studio practice, Espezel’s work inhabits a feminist-phenomenological discourse, utilizing an intentional engagement with the power and necessity of vulnerability. The work confronts the limits and conceptual dilemmas inherent within representation/mimesis, while striving for corporeal embodiment. The manifestation of anxieties (realized in both psychological and physiological states), empathy, otherness, and the “autobiographical” as a source of influence in interpretation and production, are current thematic concerns. Their practice encompasses various and evolving forms of painting, drawing, collage, craft, sculpture, installation, video and animation.  Through these material engagements, Espezel challenges the distinction between emotional and intellectual knowledge, the hierarchical dichotomies created between the arts and sciences / body and mind, and between classifications of identity, including gender, race, and social class. Subjectivity is source material, and through intensive confrontations of these categories, social meaning is broken down.

Mandy Espezel is a visual artist originally from Fort McMurray, Alberta. They received their BFA in 2007 from the University of Alberta, and their MFA in 2012 from the University of Lethbridge. From 2008-2009 Espezel was a regular contributor to Prairie Artsters.com, the Alberta-based visual arts blog created by Amy Fung, and also co-authored the column “Art Box” with Jill Stanton, published weekly in SEE Magazine.  Espezel’s work was recently included in the group exhibition “The Missing Body: performance in the absence of the artist” curated by Cindy Baker, at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery. Currently, their solo exhibition “Inappropriate Intensities” is on view at the Trianon Gallery from February 14 – April 3. Espezel lives in Lethbridge, Alberta.

 

Image courtesy of the artist: Attempting Memory: failing to achieve split position for the duration of M.I.A.'s 2013 album "Matangi"

Room or Area: 
Trianon Upper Gallery

Contact:

Jarrett Duncan | jarrett.duncan@uleth.ca