Wit López, Tryna Keep A Straight Face, 2021, photographs and digital quilt
The Baroness Elsa Project
Curated by Heather Anderson and Irene Gammel
September 15 – December 12, 2021
Carleton University Art Gallery, Ottawa
January 31 – April 14, 2022
Owens Art Gallery, Mount Allison University
Sackville, NB
Reaching back in time to spark conversations with Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven
The Baroness Elsa Project brings elemental traces of the radical art, poetry and personage of Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven (1874-1927) into conversation with the work of eight contemporary artists. Reaching back a century, this exhibition positions Freytag-Loringhoven as a conduit for exploring embodied ways of making art in the present.
This exhibition, while named for the Baroness, positions her challenges to societal norms and experimentation with art’s materials and forms as core to and in a continuum with the work of many artists today. The eight contemporary racialized, Queer, Trans, gender non-conforming and women artists featured in the exhibition work against histories and systems of exclusion, push social and disciplinary boundaries, and claim space. Their work in sculpture, beading, photography, portraiture, video, poetry, installation and performance speaks to their lived experience, intervenes in social and art historical narratives, claims agency and power and activates new futures.
Artists in the exhibition
Lene Berg, Dana Claxton, ray ferreira, Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, Wit López, Taqralik Partridge, Sheilah Restack, Carol Sawyer, Cindy Stelmackowich
