Holly Marie Armishaw | a feminist and a francophile
Back Gallery Project is pleased to present its second solo exhibition by Vancouver-based artist Holly Marie Armishaw. A Feminist and a Francophile draws together two of her greatest passions – women’s rights and French history and culture. The exhibition includes text-based art, photography, and installation that take on these disparate but interrelated subjects. Paris is Armishaw’s second city, having spent a considerable amount of time in France over the past 18 years. For this exhibition, she has converted the gallery into a Parisian pied-à-terre. The artist immerses our guests in a cozy French-style interior created through works that pay homage to both French photographer/inventor Louis Daguerre (infused with self-references to the history of photography) and to the artist Réné Magritte through the use of photographic trompe de l’oeil.
As the Women’s Rights Movement has become part of our everyday vernacular, Armishaw puts aside her personal narratives on feminine existence in favour of a more political, intersectional approach. Her art of protest is best exemplified by her iconic work Liberté Égalité Sororité (Liberty, Equality, Sisterhood) in which she makes a feminist revision to the national motto of France: “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité” (Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood). The slogan’s origin stems from the French Revolution, one of Armishaw’s main areas of study and research. Though these words feature the key elements of democracy which we continue to hold dear today – liberty and equality – they exclude over half of the population. These societal pillars were also reflected in the “Déclaration des Droits de l’Homme et le Citoyen” (Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the [male] Citizen). Again, this excludes all women from sharing equal rights, even in light of the pivotal role that the women of Paris played with their heroic actions during the Revolution.
Armishaw has created several works on paper rendered in both gold leaf and nail polish, her signature “feminine” medium. She has also taken her work to the streets in both Paris and Vancouver through site-specific installations using vinyl on limestone in the political center of Paris and in the form of protest posters for the Women’s March in Vancouver. Another work that demonstrates the feminist revisionism in her oeuvre includes her series How I Became a Feminist by Reading Nietzsche. This series began as an intellectual journey exploring her roots as an artist and depicting the profound influence that Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and Freud had on defining her core adult values as she was beginning art school. By parsing her art practice through political, social, and philosophical states, Armishaw is able to conceptually merge history with contemporary life and comment on the inequality toward and importance of women then and now.
As the Women’s Rights Movement has become part of our everyday vernacular, Armishaw puts aside her personal narratives on feminine existence in favour of a more political, intersectional approach. Her art of protest is best exemplified by her iconic work Liberté Égalité Sororité (Liberty, Equality, Sisterhood) in which she makes a feminist revision to the national motto of France: “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité” (Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood). The slogan’s origin stems from the French Revolution, one of Armishaw’s main areas of study and research. Though these words feature the key elements of democracy which we continue to hold dear today – liberty and equality – they exclude over half of the population. These societal pillars were also reflected in the “Déclaration des Droits de l’Homme et le Citoyen” (Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the [male] Citizen). Again, this excludes all women from sharing equal rights, even in light of the pivotal role that the women of Paris played with their heroic actions during the Revolution.
Armishaw has created several works on paper rendered in both gold leaf and nail polish, her signature “feminine” medium. She has also taken her work to the streets in both Paris and Vancouver through site-specific installations using vinyl on limestone in the political center of Paris and in the form of protest posters for the Women’s March in Vancouver. Another work that demonstrates the feminist revisionism in her oeuvre includes her series How I Became a Feminist by Reading Nietzsche. This series began as an intellectual journey exploring her roots as an artist and depicting the profound influence that Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and Freud had on defining her core adult values as she was beginning art school. By parsing her art practice through political, social, and philosophical states, Armishaw is able to conceptually merge history with contemporary life and comment on the inequality toward and importance of women then and now.
Holly Marie Armishaw | The Gilded Life
Holly Marie Armishaw is best known for her digital composites suggesting fantastical realms. Self-portraiture is also a strong thread in her work, together straddling the fine lines between fiction and reality, metaphysical and physical, mind and body, private and public. Armishaw’s performances are done exclusively for the camera, mimicking the interior privacy of the mind and further articulating the internal world of feminine existence.
“The Marie Antoinette” series of photographic portraits, which are based upon historical research, reveal a rare glimpse into the life of a very tragic, powerful, and often-
demonized public figure. This demonization was due in no small part to the sexually explicit caricatures and propaganda distributed throughout Paris, meant to cripple the 18th century French monarchy and to provide the public with a scapegoat for their discontent by depicting her as a fashionable, frivolous, sexually corrupt Austrian predator. Armishaw’s portraits are intended as antithesis to the public criticism and propaganda that plagued Marie Antoinette through vivid tableaus created to capture her lesser known trying experiences and surprisingly positive attributes. This included the
Queen’s embrace of the naturalistic ideals by the French Enlightenment thinker Jean-Jacques Rousseau, ironically, the very ideals, which led to her execution.
The portraits are complemented by a series of Baroque style mirrors. The introduction of the mirror into France became a key component of being “civilized” through the ability to make oneself pleasing to others. The French court was one of the first to receive this gift of refinement and civility through bribery to the Venetians for the secrets of their craft. The ornate frames and the artist’s elegant French texts are an ironic façade for the subversive messages etched onto the glass - simultaneously a symbol of beauty and tragedy. They suggest a hidden world of pain and deep-set anger, revealing the inner world and thoughts that one may hold, but may not speak in “civilized” society.
The fantastical realm of Chateau Versailles may seem to provide the backdrop for a life of decadent indulgence, but there is no escaping the tragedies of reality. The life of Marie Antoinette becomes a symbolic reminder that the suffering of women is universal and knows no class barriers or distinction of time or of place. Together the works may serve as a mirror of judging others amidst the complex layers of fiction and reality, while identifying ourselves as objects of scrutiny.
Holly Marie Armishaw’s work has been exhibited both locally and internationally, including Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, New York, North Adams, Boston, Sao Paulo and Paris. Her work has also appeared in numerous publications and university lectures.
http://blogs.vancouversun.com/2013/10/23/holly-marie-armishaw-reflective-surfaces-with-conceptual-depth/
“The Marie Antoinette” series of photographic portraits, which are based upon historical research, reveal a rare glimpse into the life of a very tragic, powerful, and often-
demonized public figure. This demonization was due in no small part to the sexually explicit caricatures and propaganda distributed throughout Paris, meant to cripple the 18th century French monarchy and to provide the public with a scapegoat for their discontent by depicting her as a fashionable, frivolous, sexually corrupt Austrian predator. Armishaw’s portraits are intended as antithesis to the public criticism and propaganda that plagued Marie Antoinette through vivid tableaus created to capture her lesser known trying experiences and surprisingly positive attributes. This included the
Queen’s embrace of the naturalistic ideals by the French Enlightenment thinker Jean-Jacques Rousseau, ironically, the very ideals, which led to her execution.
The portraits are complemented by a series of Baroque style mirrors. The introduction of the mirror into France became a key component of being “civilized” through the ability to make oneself pleasing to others. The French court was one of the first to receive this gift of refinement and civility through bribery to the Venetians for the secrets of their craft. The ornate frames and the artist’s elegant French texts are an ironic façade for the subversive messages etched onto the glass - simultaneously a symbol of beauty and tragedy. They suggest a hidden world of pain and deep-set anger, revealing the inner world and thoughts that one may hold, but may not speak in “civilized” society.
The fantastical realm of Chateau Versailles may seem to provide the backdrop for a life of decadent indulgence, but there is no escaping the tragedies of reality. The life of Marie Antoinette becomes a symbolic reminder that the suffering of women is universal and knows no class barriers or distinction of time or of place. Together the works may serve as a mirror of judging others amidst the complex layers of fiction and reality, while identifying ourselves as objects of scrutiny.
Holly Marie Armishaw’s work has been exhibited both locally and internationally, including Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, New York, North Adams, Boston, Sao Paulo and Paris. Her work has also appeared in numerous publications and university lectures.
http://blogs.vancouversun.com/2013/10/23/holly-marie-armishaw-reflective-surfaces-with-conceptual-depth/