ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

Plastic Daisies Don't Die is a 2-channel, immersive audio/video installation inspired by the erstwhile censorship of the Czech New Wave feminist comedy, Daisies (1966) by Vera Chytilova. This work pays homage to Chytilova's use of film to address gender politics and to critique the grotesque decadence of unbridled capitalism. The artist understands Chytilova's film to be a celebration of anarchy in which the over-use of symbols generates a surplus of meaning that results in absurdity. As the artist's means of dealing with the tension between with her own admiration for the canonical feminist work in question and her contradictory disdain for the religiously cinephiliac tendencies she senses in academic, curatorial, and technical film practices, she has chosen to reactivate this film's political provocation by deconstructing and transforming its material texture. Plastic Daisies Don't Die utilizes surreal and kitsch imagery in combination with altered footage from Daisies to produce a playfully irreverent disavowal of image-fetishism and cinephilia.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Emily Pelstring received her BFA in Film/Animation/Video from Rhode Island School of Design in 2006, and is currently pursuing her MFA in Studio Arts at Concordia. Her work draws on a variety of techniques including drawing, sculpture, collage, animation, dance, electro-acoustic composition and film/video. Of late, she has been creating installations that are rhythmic, spatial, and embody a theatrical or dancerly sensibility. Thematically, she is interested in the capture, corroboration, and potential emancipation of gestures, bodies, and identities by technologies and regimes of representation.

FOR MORE INFO
go to the artist's website at
http://emilypelstring.mosaicglobe.com

Exhibition Dates:
February 6 - 14, 2009
Tuesday - Sunday, 12pm - 5pm
Vernissage:
Saturday, February 7, 2009, 3pm - 6pm