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CBC
25 minutes ago
- CBC
To capture the ups and downs of motherhood, this artist makes a self-portrait every day
Dartmouth, N.S., artist Alice Jennex made her most recent gallery show during her children's naptimes, and she says that wound up influencing the work. "I don't think the work would have been made or wouldn't be the same if I had made it pre-motherhood," she says. When Jennex began capturing daily self-portraits — busting out her watercolours during the lull after feeding her newborn or during her children's naptime — she wasn't planning on sharing the results. The intimate, emotionally resonant paintings of her face — what she calls "the most vulnerable work I've put into the world" — were part of her journal, next to daily entries chronicling the many sides of motherhood. So how did these private paintings and raw bits become the exhibition Chromatic States, on display now at Dartmouth's The Craig Gallery, where some are blown up to supersized dimensions? Jennex says as soon as she showed some of the paintings to fellow artist Meghan Macdonald, the small works on paper became something bigger, and the proverbial lock on her journal was blown off completely. "I think that something I have always admired about Alice is that she is really great at maintaining some kind of practice that feeds her art practice," says Macdonald. "When I first met Alice, she was really quite disciplined at keeping a journal every day, making these observations about herself and the world around her that I think was important to her work as an artist and as a painter." Macdonald adds that she liked the work so much that she encouraged Jennex to mount the work as an exhibition. What she found most interesting was how it explored the intersection of Jennex's art practice and her parenting, "and how at this stage," Macdonald says,"these two aspects of her identity are really bleeding together." But before they were hung on a gallery wall, these daily paintings had a more humble goal: to help Jennex balance being an artist and a mom. "I decided to kind of think about how could I just maintain that creative act in my life every day, amidst all the routines that come with caring for other people?" says Jennex. "Part of the process for this work was to sit down and give myself a bit of time to reflect and to write things down and just locate myself," amidst the changes of the postpartum period. "It involved an effort to express and locate these experiences and put them into something tangible and be like, 'This exists. It's real. It's a part of my experience,'" she says. The portraits are a departure for Jennex, whose previous works were more large-scale, figurative pieces (Macdonald referenced older Jennex paintings "connecting figures of the self to landscapes," while Jennex herself talked about an earlier series she did focusing on the poses swimmers made in action). But it isn't just new territory thematically. Part of what makes the exhibition Chromatic States so captivating is the way repetition and variation butt against each other. The same subject matter — Jennex's face — rendered in a limited palette of 18 colours, captures the variations and subtle changes that a person embodies from one day to the next. "I began to shift what I even believe is a self portrait," says Jennex. "There was one day I remember where it was just a really heavy day, and I sat down and I wrote, 'I'm a blob, like that's it.' And so the portrait really doesn't have my features. It's just a kind of abstract blob of colour… And I was like, 'That is the most accurate portrait that I could make today.'" Not all the self-portraits deal with the difficulties of motherhood, though, as Macdonald points out. "What she chose to share is this glimpse into that daily labor and the experiences that she's having in motherhood, which are at times very joyful, but there's also fears and there's sorrows too," she says. She adds that the works in Chromatic States feel, to her, like Jennex working out a way to both adapt to motherhood while also retaining important parts of her old self. "I don't know if this is how she feels," Macdonald says, "but I see it as a way to keep a strong hold on herself — who [Jennex] is, who she was before children — and bringing that self into her new life as a mother, while so many elements of herself and things around her are changing." While time and material constraints — using minimal supplies so they'd be in easy reach while managing her children's needs — created guardrails around Jennex's project, it's a classic case of constraints forcing creativity. "Motherhood is providing the structure for this work… I need a structure, and that structure is really metaphorical in resembling life as a parent," she says. "There's just not all the options available to me right now, and it makes me be very particular and specific and work within that routine." Though the point, initially, was for Jennex to keep track of herself and her life in the midst of the busy-ness of raising a family, the exhibition turns the personal into the universal. Jennex says that she wants to challenge the idea of mothers as "stoic and natural at nurturing" and instead depict the aspects of motherhood that moms are reluctant to talk about. "You're like, 'Whoa, where's like, the raw, real, gritty, moments?' that I think are really there but we feel like we're going to be judged, so we don't want to share them." She says that ultimately, she hopes people "can connect to that raw emotion," and that while she may be the portrait subject, the show is "not meant to just be about myself," but rather about the experience of motherhood broadly. "I hope it might just help someone else feel seen or acknowledge a struggle or something they've met and worked through," she says.
CTV News
an hour ago
- CTV News
Flo Rida, Kardinal Offishall returning to Winnipeg
Flo Rida performs during the 2023 iHeartRadio Jingle Ball at the Kia Forum, Friday, Dec. 1, 2023, in Inglewood, Calif. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello) Flo Rida is set to return to Winnipeg. The Grammy nominated rapper announced he will perform at Canada Life Centre on Oct. 1. The Miami-based artist burst onto the scene over a decade ago with platinum certified hit 'Low,' which spent 10-consecutive weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100. Kardinal Offishall Kardinal Offishall speaks prior to presenting Maestro Fresh Wes with the trophy signifying his induction into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame at the Juno awards, in Halifax, Sunday, March 24, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darren Calabrese (Darren Calabrese/THE CANADIAN PRESS) There will also be some Canadian representation, with Toronto-born rapper Kardinal Offishall opening the show. Offishall is a groundbreaking artist in his own right, becoming the first Canadian rapper to top the Billboard Hot 100 charts in 2008 with his smash hit 'Dangerous' featuring Akon. Tickets for the concert go on sale Friday through Ticketmaster.
Winnipeg Free Press
4 hours ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
Laufey's ‘A Matter of Time' embraces anger, jazz, pop and a collaboration with twin sister
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Long before the Icelandic Chinese artist Laufey became recognized the world over for her neoclassical jazz-meets-pop music, she was a student, answering a familiar yearbook prompt: 'Where do you see yourself in 10 years?' Her answer: Move to the U.S., sign a record deal and win a Grammy. The 26-year-old has done all three. 'I must have been so confident to write that because I remember that being a very far-sought kind of thing,' the musician born Laufey Lín Jónsdóttir told The Associated Press. Those aren't her only accomplishments: She's collaborated with Barbra Streisand, shared the stage with Hozier, Noah Kahan and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. An unexpected nonconformist to the rules of contemporary pop, Laufey's third album, 'A Matter of Time' out Friday, pulls inspiration from country and Icelandic folk music as well as classical and bossa nova sounds. 'My ultimate goal is to introduce young audiences to jazz music, to classical music, to encourage them to learn instruments and explore their own sound,' Laufey said. In a recent interview, Laufey discussed her new album, embracing anger on the record, working with her twin sister and more. Responses are edited for clarity and brevity. AP: What's the story behind the title 'A Matter of Time?' LAUFEY: I knew I wanted the album to have time as a central theme. I was just so fascinated by how it's kind of like this one thing that humans have no control over, and sometimes we want to speed up and sometimes we want to slow down, but ultimately it's out of our control. And there's something romantic about that to me. Now its taken on a little bit of a different meaning in that it's basically me baring my soul to the world and baring my soul to a lover. And it's kind of like, 'a matter of time until you find out everything about me.' AP: The end of 'Sabotage' felt very jarring, which is unexpected. Are you embracing anger on this album? LAUFEY: For sure. I think I was never allowed to embrace anger. I was a very good kid growing up. I was very polite and very quiet. I used this as a way to show that you can be angry, and rather, to show also that you can be both a soft, spoken person while still harboring anger. I think the understanding of women and characters has so much been like one or the other. She's like this, she's a mad woman, she a soft, sweet woman. Like, we're all everything. AP: How do you compare this album to your past projects? This is just the most free I've been. I wasn't following any type of compass in that I wasn't trying to create something as education. I was more so just making music from the heart. I just approached with a whole lot more confidence, even though the album's all about anxiety and learning about oneself and insecurity and delusion. And it's tapping into emotions that I maybe wouldn't have dared to tap into before. It is the most confident I've been, because I don't think I'd have the confidence to put out the music in this album before. AP: Your twin sister Junia is credited on the album. What's it like working with her? LAUFEY: It's so special. We do everything together. Like, she does everything, pretty much, — other than the music, the literal music making — she has her hands in. All the merch, that's all her. The album covers, all the creative, like, music videos, everything — she's such a part of the project. And then she literally plays violin on some of the songs. I know so many artists who talk about how it can be quite lonely, but I've never really been alone. Like, I've always done it in tandem with my sister. AP: You've spoken about the importance of Asian role models. I think you've become one Weekly A weekly look at what's happening in Winnipeg's arts and entertainment scene. yourself. LAUFEY: I grew up in a very, very different, like, homogenous Icelandic community. I didn't see people who looked like me every single day. I saw my mom, that was it. And I guess I saw my identical twin sister, who looked exactly like me. But it's so powerful, seeing someone who looks like you, that you can look up to. I already see more representation, but there's still such a long way to go. I'm still a half-white Asian woman, you know? And I don't want young Asian women to look up and see all of the stars in front of them be half-White either, because what kind of message is that sending? So, I don't know. Anything I can do to lift up voices, create those communities, and empower young Asian artists to do their thing, that's, like, at the center of my philosophy. AP: You've done all the things you said you wanted to do in your yearbook. What's next? LAUFEY: I'd love to score a film or do, like, a theme song to a film, preferably a James Bond theme song, because that's, like, my dream. But it's so hard to say because I've ticked off all those simple things off — many are big, but the tick-able ones. I hope I'm still making music and I still hope that I love it.
