FOFA GALLERY

Vitrines – The Darkling Sea, Nancy Anne Mcphee

The Darkling Sea is an installation comprised of a series of tableaus of trapunto, a quilting technique used to achieve a padded, embossed design, depicting representations of giant squid, and the Library of Depth and Gender, a ladder-like accumulation of books, toys and handmade clothing.

Artist Nancy Anne Mcphee uses imagery of Architeuthis dux, or giant squid, to represent human perception of the animal body as both monstrous and beautiful. In using silk trapunto quilting as a method of drawing animal bodies, the quilts become intermediaries and metaphors for the anxiety of uncomfortable/ uncommon forms of bodies/ beauty, and the female desire to seek out a place of comfort and safety. Similarly, through the Library of Depth and Gender, Mcphee forms a narrative of thought and meaning of how body and gender inform structures of knowledge.

“RIVER – The Mirror to the Sky,” an installation in the Black Box space, features two large prisms acting as optical instruments to articulate the relationship of a river to the sky creating a dialog between the two elements.

Through her work in River, Novakova uses the river as a metaphor for the flow of thought and the flow of time. River transforms the entire gallery space into a submersive experience of a river current running through. The artist also looks at the relationship of work and environment, as well as the relationship between object and viewer.

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts which last year invested $37.8 million in the arts in Quebec.