Exhibitions
Recent beaded and photographic works by Nadia Myre demonstrating the Algonquin artist's longstanding fascination with the communicative potential of abstract visual symbols.
The Desire Schematics depict linear, technical diagrams in coloured beads on white backgrounds and boast saucy titles like Lubricator and Union Screwed. The beaded works are also presented as pristine large-scale photographic images, framed in white and depicting mostly white beads arrayed in uniform grids.
The Scarscapes photographs depict bodily scars rendered in a sombre palette of grey, black and white beads, titled according to their simplified forms. With their monumental feel and machined aesthetic, Myre’s photographs abstract and distill her symbols of choice.
These works exemplify Myre’s persistent interest in systems of communication, especially in the coded forms employed in the realm of the human body, with its scars, frailties and unruly desires. Such languages as Braille, ground to air signals and Morse code have all made appearances in her earlier work, but Myre’s use of such systems is never merely aesthetic. “There’s no such thing as decoration,” she has said, “everything means something.”
Whether presented in analogue (beaded) or digital (photographic) form, Myre’s works lead us, humorously and poignantly, to consider the real-world objects, events and histories – whether personal or political, historical or contemporary – that inspired them.
Curated by
Sandra Dyck
Artists in the exhibition
Nadia Myre
