ANGELA GROSSMANN'S MODELS OF RESISTANCE

Models of Resistance, Angela Grossman's latest exhibition at Poiesis Contemporary, has been met with wide critical acclaim and favourably reviewed by both Robin Laurence for The Georgia Straight and Hadani Ditmars for Canadian Art.

Ditmars lingers on how "Grossmann’s 22 collaged images, created from photographs of old doll clothes, human hair and appendaged limbs, torsos and puppet heads, are expressions of female empowerment. There is a potency that belies their cartoon-like surfaces; spliced-in images of prosthetic limbs, sexually ambiguous body parts and found homemade erotic photography (almost innocent in its amateurism) create works that are equal parts Betty Boop, Bettie Page and Boadicea."

Laurence delves into the particulars of several works, concluding that "Gender is presented as a fluid condition and its expression as an ongoing and improvisational theatrical act. Also evident here is a thwarting of the voyeuristic impulse, an undermining of ownership by any single gaze or sexual orientation. Ruscheinsky extols Grossmann’s series as contravening the objectification of the female body, presenting instead “potent images of female empowerment”."

Read more on Canadian Art and The Georgia Straight.