Sylvia Safdie: The Inventories of Invention
September 10 – November 1, 2003
From
September 10th to November 1st 2003 the Leonard & Bina
Ellen Art Gallery presents Sylvia Safdie: The Inventories
of Invention, the first major solo exhibition of this artist
in a Montreal public
gallery since the late 1980s. The exhibition will include
recent and new works in various media including sculpture,
installation, video, and drawing, and highlights the complex
relationships that
have developed between the artist’s collecting and
creative practices.
For Safdie, collecting is more than the assemblage and classification
of diverse objects; it provides a means by which she can
explore the metamorphic potential of natural materials. Collected
objects resonate with personal history and narratives, or
are otherwise infused with symbolic value through the artist’s
interventions. Safdie’s work also alludes to the broader
themes of time,
displacement, dislocation, and relocation. This exhibition
provides a unique opportunity to look into the methodical,
experimental, aesthetic, and intuitive impulses that shape
the artist’s collecting and
creative practices.
Sylvia Safdie: The Inventories of Invention is curated by
Dr. Irena Murray, Chief Curator of the Rare Books and Special
Collections Division at McGill University. A full-colour
bilingual catalogue with
essays by Irena Murray and Stuart Reid, Director of the Tom
Thomson Memorial Art Gallery, accompanies the exhibition.
Sylvia Safdie was born in Aley, Lebanon in 1942, and lived
in Israel before moving to Canada in 1953. She obtained a
Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Concordia University in
1975, and has
exhibited widely in Canada, the United States, and Europe.
Her most recent solo exhibition took place in 2002, at the
Tom Thomson Memorial Art Gallery. In 2000, she presented
Autres territoires at
the Centre culturel canadien in Paris. Her work is found
in private, corporate and public collections in Canada and
abroad. The artist is represented by Peak Gallery in Toronto,
Paul Kuhn Gallery in
Calgary, and Hochelber Fine Art in Montreal.
The Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery gratefully acknowledges
the assistance of The Canada Council for the Arts, Assistance
to Art Museums and Public Galleries, and AVW-TELAV Solutions
audiovisuelles for its generous contribution of video equipment
to the exhibition.
