Les Demoiselles de la Transfiguration
Holly Owen
Curated by: Susan Shuppli
The Or Gallery completes its winter program with an exhibition of new works by photo-text artist Holly Owen. The artist produced Les Demoiselle de la Transfiguration: How Will We Recognize Our Allies? while attending the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program in New York, 1992. Media coverage of the Hill/Thomas case and LA riots put to relief the focus of the program: Cultural Theory and issues of representation with regard to identity, race and ethnicity. As a Canadian of British descent severed from her community in Vancouver, Holly along with her colleagues, had to confront their different cultural histories. How Will We Recognize Our Allies? takes up the problem of reading others in the context of building alliances. Les Demoiselle de la Transfiguration: How Will We Recognize Our Allies? will be Holly Owen’s first solo exhibition in Vancouver since returning from New York last year. This work continues her explorations into the psychoanalytic constructions of subjectivity within the contexts of feminist discourse and identity politics. Holly’s work is also framed by a localized feminist photo-based conceptual tradition and practice.