YVONNE KUSTEC is a Calgary based artist originally from Oakville, Ontario. She attended AUARTS (formerly ACAD), majoring in sculpture and earning a BFA with distinction in 2011. Yvonne utilizes various hand building techniques with clay to produce figurative sculptural work that is merged with elements of flora and fauna. There is a long history of floral work in clay, she honours the tradition of the craft and the vulnerability and resiliency of nature through recreating its delicate intricacies.

ARTIST STATEMENT

Yvonne uses nature as a metaphor for both transformation and regeneration, merging flora and fauna with the body to reclaim it back from what the elements of the world take from it.Through her work she heals her personal relationship to identity and femininity by reflecting on her personal relationship to tradition, symbols and systems. Flowers act as a symbolic representation of the virtues/attributes/characterizations attributed to femininity. The underlying narrative of the transformative space between nature and body is intended to be both beautiful and uncomfortable; it speaks to the powerful and instinctual survival nature of the feminine spirit.

2020/2021, Sep-Nov 2019