Nov 12 – Feb 12 2018
Opening Event Tuesday, November 20 | 7 – 9 PM
@ Makom – 402 College St
Curator: Evelyn Tauben
Collaged photographs and drawings that mine childhood memories, reflecting the volatility of nature, community and identity
Multi-disciplinary artist Lynne Heller creates an original, layered installation for the FENTSTER window gallery. The exhibition draws upon recollections from her childhood at Camp Naivelt (Yiddish for “New World”), a summertime family retreat in Brampton focused on secularist, socialist values, activism, and a celebration of Jewish and Yiddish culture. This haven of radical politics was the centre of Heller’s Jewish community as she was raised in a gentile area of Toronto where her Jewish background set her apart. As the child of a Jewish father and an Anglo-Protestant mother, Heller felt a sense of displacement in many settings. This experience of dislocation is explored in the installation through a poignant early memory of visiting Naivelt in the spring off-season to find the property covered with enormous ice floes ejected from the thawing Credit River that runs through the camp. The massive ice blocks appeared both organic and oddly unnatural. Similarly, Heller felt both integrated into the Naivelt community during the 1960s and 70s and also felt different in that milieu given her mixed heritage. Combining original photographs, drawings and renderings of that eerie frozen terrain, large-scale pictures hold out the promise of a new world, one that bridges seemingly distinct realms.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Lynne Heller is a post-disciplinary artist, designer, educator and academic. Her interests encompass material culture, new media performative interaction, graphic novels and sculptural installation. Heller completed her MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her PhD at University College Dublin. Her research was practice-based with a specialty in Digital Media Arts and Feminist Studies. She is an Adjunct Professor at OCAD University and an Associate Member of the Graduate Faculty. Heller is co-director of the Data Materialization Lab at OCAD University. She is also an adjunct faculty member of SMARTlab, Ireland. Heller has an extensive exhibition record both nationally and internationally.
