Exhibitions
In Cara Tierney's photographs, the artist's body is characterized as a point of departure.
In some works, the artist appears just once. In others, Tierney is replicated many times, playing all the parts in digitally-constructed scenes set in the studio, the city and the countryside.
These photographs look to the past – to the way the body has been depicted by such artists as Botticelli, Edwin Holgate and Bill Reid. They also examine the present, calling into question society’s fixed (either/or) categories of gender and sexuality.
Tierney’s photographs ultimately propose personal identity as a fluid and open construct, open to negotiation. As they have said, “the obsessive multiplication of the self in the photographs not only raises the idea of a fractured self, but is a deliberate response to the lack of visible queer subjects in mainstream society.”
Curated by
Sandra Dyck
Artists in the exhibition
Cara Tierney
Credits
Presented in collaboration with the University of Ottawa’s Department of Visual Arts MFA program
