Exhibition Dates: June 22, 2018 - July 14, 2018
Reception: June 22, 2018 from 3:00 - 6:00PM
Performance: June 23, 2018 from 1:00 - 5:00PM at Central Memorial Library
In the performance, Washing Hands in the Shape of My Mother’s Hands, Marika Vandekraats washes the hands of participants with a soap casted from her mother’s hand, sharing a brief experience of familial care. The hand-wash station will be set up in the Central Memorial Park, with an open invitation for anyone to participate. Over time, the soap will break down and dissolve the fingerprints, removing the identity, and leaving behind a faint scent of clean hands.
A concurrent exhibition, Screwdriver for Mary, takes place in TRUCK Contemporary Art, screening a new video work and installation that is built on the memories of maternal care, touch, soap bubbles. The imprints of care one receives dissolves through time to integrate into a larger weave of one’s being. Its assurance looms writ large as memory, promise, or reciprocation.
Presented in partnership with Sled Island Music & Arts Festival.
Marika Vandekraats is a visual artist currently based in her home city of Vancouver. She previously lived in Rotterdam, NL, where she began experimentation into performances and site-specific based work. Currently, her work focuses on the human personalities given to non-human elements in life. Through assemblage Vandekraats questions the assumed actions and expectations of commonplace objects. She pushes such expectations until the objects exhaust their own functions and begin to produce something anew. Marika Vandekraats received her BFA from Emily Carr University of Art and Design in 2016 and currently works at the James Black Gallery.