AZUL – COLONIAL – BLUE
May 13, 2022
permission to play
May 13, 2022
Exhibition runs May 20th – July 17, 2022
Opening Reception May 20th 7-9pm @Yuill Family Gallery
This exhibition is part of the 2022 Medalta International Artists in Residence program.
Artist Statement
She’s Here Too is a collection of self-reflective works created over the course of my residence at Medalta in the Historic Clay District. It is a compilation of works examining stages of longing, grief and confusion experienced during a period of uncertainty. As I work, the raw clay is pulled and torn into fist-sized slabs, then squeezed together and drawn up to form walls. These walls meet to create a basic form which is then refined into recognizable animals, objects, and sections of bodies.
Each piece represents emotional states as I process being in a state of transience. They exemplify my feelings towards home from the perspective of the embodiment of space. We are representative of the spaces we seek to inhabit. She’s Here Too is a collective arrangement inspired by being in a personal period of rapid progression towards the strange and unknown while surrounded by others in varying states of the same journey. Each work utilizes a series of recognizable forms assembled in grotesque and unusual ways in a visual collage of shapes and colours to build a overarching feeling relational to the viewer and work.
Artist Biography
Leandra Brandson is an interdisciplinary artist currently living and working in Treaty 1 Territory, Winnipeg, Manitoba. She primarily focuses on queer identity, and how intersectional lived experiences can come together to form collective thought. She uses clay to build large-scale figurative sculptures. Her ceramic works primarily use paints, underglaze, and textiles to achieve a mix of surface textures and colours to build a diverse body of narratives within her works.
Brandson graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with Honours in 2021 from the University of Manitoba. She holds a position as an instructor in ceramics through the city of Winnipeg. As of October 2021, Brandson is pursuing a residency at Medalta in the Historic Clay District, in Medicine Hat, Alberta.
In creating large-scale ceramic sculptures, Brandson addresses the curated identity from a queer perspective. Internal and external viewpoints are the building blocks of being, and how we choose to interpret them drastically influences our ability to self-regulate physically and emotionally. Featuring vibrant colours and textures, she articulates the urban queer experience and its relationship to the digitized queer experience. Clay is an artistic chameleon, allowing her to push and pull the persona into being.
