Hospital Hallway
Division Gallery
Toronto, ON
March 2016
Video Still
Hospital Hallway is a sterile, clinical space, a hallway in the shape of an octagon. The viewer enters though an institutional looking door, where they ar greeted by a series of screens which line the walls of the hallway, each featuring a video of myself as I play the my grandmother (as the patient), caught in claustrophobic, nightmarish scenes. The movements I do are meant to communicate the loss of control, loss of self, and total loss of body and mind.
Field Trip: Sarah Anne Johnson
McMichael Canadian Art Collection
Kleinburg, ON
March 4 to June 4, 2016
“As a Primary Exhibition partner with the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival, the McMichael’s exhibition Field Trip: Sarah Anne Johnson shows the artist’s latest project about Canada’s outdoor music festivals. Johnson sees these festivals as a forum for a community of people coming together to create a modern day Dionysian celebration through a connection to nature, music and dance, and the rejection of social norms.”
For a full press release, click here.
Chromogenic Print
The Kitchen
G44 Centre for Contemporary Photography
Toronto, ON
April 1, 2016 to April 23, 2016
“A stark continuation of her award winning series, “House on Fire” (2009), photographer Sarah Anne Johnson returns to her maternal family’s story through a new era of performance-based video installations with “Birthday Cake” (2016). In the 1950s, Johnson’s maternal grandmother was an unsuspecting participant in a CIA research program. Seeking treatment for post-partum depression, she was subjected to a series of mind control experiments at the Allen Memorial Institute at McGill University, Montreal. Addressing the generational trauma of these experiments within the domesticated space, Johnson continues to span her artistic practice from performance to video to further investigate and embody the difficult histories and its effects on her family.”
Presented in partnership with Images Festival
Click here for the full press release.
Photo courtesy of G44 Centre for Contemporary Photography, Toronto