Landry’s encyclopedia bed released my long-forgotten childhood fantasy. In the process of remembering, I reconnected with this lost child-self, experiencing once again the boundlessness of her imagination. I was taken home, a home of long ago, where my fundamental sense of self was formed. The domestic space is the origin of our primary experiences, where our vast array of memory begins to form, and from where our unconscious begins to recognize and separate itself as distinct from that of the other. In her magical installation, Landry mines a wealth of connotations from the domestic space; her transformation of ordinary things unleashing the possibility for free association, liberating the most mundane objects from their servitude and imbuing them with the boundless associations buried deeply within us.
1 Jeanne Randolph, Symbolization and its Discontents, Toronto: YYZ Books, 1997, p. 41-42.
2 Ibid, p. 43.
3 Carl Jung, Man and his symbols, New York: Doubleday, 1964, pp. 28-29.
Diane Landry lives and works in Québec City. Since 1987, her works have travelled widely across Canada and in major cities in the USA, Mexico, Argentina, many European countries, Australia, and China. Her works have been discussed in numerous publications and recognized by important awards in Québec as well as in the United States. She is the first recipient of the prestigious Giverny Capital Prize, a distinction awarded to a visual artist from Québec. She has been an artist in residence in many centres in Canada, the USA, France, Italy, and Argentina. She has just completed a six-month stay in the Studio du Québec in New York, sponsored by the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec. Diane Landry holds a MA from Stanford University, California and is represented by SolwayJones Gallery in Los Angeles.
Sara Angelucci is a photo and video artist living in Toronto. She has exhibited her photography across Canada and her videos have been screened nationally and internationally, in festivals in Europe, Hong Kong and Australia. Her work has been supported by various public arts funders and is included in numerous private and public collections such as: the National Portait Gallery of Canada, the Museum of Civilization and the McDonald Stewart Art Centre. Previously the Director of Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography from 1998 to 2008, Angelucci is currently teaching photography at the Ontario College of Art & Design and Ryerson University. Angelucci holds a B.A. from the University of Guelph and an M.F.A. from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and her work is represented by Wynick/Tuck Gallery and V-Tape in Toronto.
Design and Editing: Tony Hewer
Digital publication to the exhibition Diane Landry: The Magic Shield
Presented by the Koffler Gallery Off-site at Beaver Hall Gallery | March 19 to May 3, 2009 | Curator: Mona Filip
© Koffler Centre of the Arts, 2009, in collaboration with the individual contributors.
All rights reserved. ISBN 978-0-920863-85-5.