Angell Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition featuring the interdisciplinary installation “Mending Broken China” by Vessna Perunovich, initiated and conceptualized during her stay at the Red Gate Residency in Beijing, China in 2014. The work stitches together the artist’s personal narrative with a distinctive narrative of the ancient culture of China, itself on the crossroads between deconstruction and transformation.
The show runs in the East Gallery from March 27 to April 25, 2015. Visitors will have the opportunity to meet the artist during the reception on Friday March 27th, 6:00 to 9:00 PM.
“What gets broken can’t be put back together” – from fixing a broken dish to rebuilding a broken country - Mending Broken China is intended as a playful metaphor for dealing with crises, both personal and political. Like the fine china (porcelain) that stands for precious objects kept and cherished in the family for generations, this body of work centers around archetypes, traces and memories left behind, and ways of collecting, restoring and rebuilding.
Taking the experience of her own cultural displacement and fragmented identity, positioned in-between traditions and homelands, the work plays with the idea of a “quick fix” and contemplates different ways of restoring, healing and fitting in. The push and pull between construction and demolition, art and industry, manmade and mass-produced, consumption and rejection are all examined here. Exploring the processes of fracturing and mending through drawing, installation, video and sculpture, the artist creates a powerful metaphor for identities, relationships, societies and countries that are broken and in need of rebuilding.
In her art practice, Vessna Perunovich weaves drawing, sculpture, painting, video and performance and presents them as layered interdisciplinary installations. Her work addresses her own experience through a female perspective and personal narratives - displacement, exile, transition and identity are all examined in a wider social and political context. Exploring the discourse between line and form, figuration and abstraction, her practice oscillates between place and space, public and private, object-based materiality and performance-based immateriality.
Vessna Perunovich’s work is collected by the MacDonald Stewart Art Centre, the Art Gallery of Hamilton, Oshawa Art Gallery, Museums of Contemporary Art in Villa Nova de Cerveira in Portugal, Museum of Contemporary Art of Vojvodina in Serbia, US Embassy in Belgrade, and the Cultural Centre of Belgrade, Serbia. She has been written about in Canadian Art, Border Crossings, Art Toronto, Espace Sculpture and World Sculpture News, and Vie Des Art among others.
