MAin Space
HOME•[made]
Irina Skvortsova, Aimee Sawyers, Karine Thibault
February 11 - March 7, 2006
Reception: March 4, 2006 6-8p
Karine Thibault, Untitled, oil on canvas, 2005
Karine Thibault
My work focuses on humanity. In these paintings I explore the notion of “home” as being a feeling; a place defined through human connections and interactions, and not defined by architectural boundaries. My imagery is both drawn from my own experiences, my own memories, and from an abundance of images found around me. I work with both types of images in the same way, treating them all as my own, and therefore appropriating them. The works speak of places I’ve been, both physically and emotionally, and of places where I wish to go. These paintings represent an ongoing search for a place to call home; they tell a story.
Aimee Sawyers, Perspective of Home, woodcut, 2005
Aimee Sawyers
The idea of ‘home’ is an interesting concept. Some of us define ‘home’ as a happy space, a place of comfort, while some may feel trapped by it and the social structures that support it. Others feel that home is a more transient concept and whether by choice or not, simply make their home where ever life takes them, or embark on a quest of sorts to discover somewhere to feel ‘at home.’ Many do not view home as a place or space at all, but instead define it as something within oneself or by the people around them. Regardless of how we identify ‘home,’ I find it remarkable that each of us are connected to this seemingly simple concept in some manner, yet each of us in an individual and personal way; rendering ‘home,’ a much more complex concept. As someone who has flip-flopped between the home that she has known all her life, and her homes as a student, and some who is about to face a new segment in her life as the conclusion of her undergraduate degree fast-approaches, it is these endless descriptions of ‘home’ that I explore in my current work. Using primarily Silk-screen Printmaking as my medium, I attempt to uncover my own explanation for ‘home.’ I do so by comparing and contrasting stereotypical and personal notions of home and domesticity, community, personal identity and ‘home’ as a gendered environment.
Irina Skvortsova, you wonder if you can trust me, lithograph, 2005
My work in this exhibition, Home[made], tries to depict ‘home’ as a state of mind more than an actual physical place. I focus on the potential negative aspects of home where one feels disconnected and isolated from others and self as a result of an emotional homelessness. The work is underpinned by the writings of Edward Said, where the author addresses certain psychological effects of immigration such as one’s sense of worldliness coupled with a sense of loss of a secular ‘home’. I am personally very interested in social-psychology and philosophy of religion. The inspiration for this work comes from looking at modernity as the Age of Anxiety. The solution to this anxiety is yet to follow in my future works.