NINA LEO
small mechanisms for drowning
APRIL 27 TO MAY 21, 2011
OPENING RECEPTION: Friday April 29, 2011, 6 - 9 PM
small mechanisms for drowning is a series of drawings that explores the distillation of an otherwise redesigned intimacy arising from within contemporary media and technology-rich cultures. While these technologies are, on the one hand, literally at our fingertips, offering a sense that everything is close and that we are able as never before to configure our own individual experiences, they are, on the other hand, highly mediated, homogeneous, and sterilized of richness.
This series is an attempt to remedy the unreason inherent within the direct multi-sensorial experience of the human condition by remapping our maladies onto mechanical systems ─ diagrams of the dialysis machine for example. In these diagrams, each technological step is reassigned with an emotional equivalent. The attempt, however futile, is to purify the psyche through the same external mechanical processes used to purify contaminated blood.
Nina Leo is an interdisciplinary artist working primarily in sculpture, installation, drawing and performance. She holds an Honors B.A. in Visual Arts from the University of Western Ontario and an MFA in Emerging Practices from the University at Buffalo. She has exhibited her work in galleries and public institutions in Canada, the United States and Mexico. Currently, she teaches in the Sculpture and Installation department at OCAD University.
