Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Margarita Macdonald and Maria Flawia Litwin

loop Gallery is pleased to announce exhibitions by guest artists Maria Flawia Litwin entitled Ró?a Selawiska and Margarita Macdonald entitled Border Memory: Crossing Borders.

Ró?a Selawiska, Ja i Moje Dzieci, Colour print, 15” x 20”Add caption
Maria Flawia Litwin explores her alter ego, Ró?a Selawiska in this exhibition of self-photographs. Selawiska’s work is about obsessive self-recording and reflection. She investigates her gender, identity, sexuality and cultural heritage through an ever-shifting symbolic language rooted in Slavic history, literature and folklore. Her intent is to simultaneously uncover and mask her personal reality.

Ró?a Selawiska is a Polish conceptual photographer trained at the University of Plastic Arts in ?ód?. Her work is rooted in Slavic folklore and intertwines political and personal mythologies. She exhibits rarely and the work she shows is deceivingly unassuming. It consists of self-photographs small in size and limited in subject matter. Her images are intensely personal and autobiographical.
Margarita Macdonald, Boundaries, Photo litho, silkscreen, chine colle on gampi, 32.5" x 44", BFK, 2011
Margarita Macdonald’s Border Memory: Crossing Borders, focuses on reconstructing memory. Macdonald is drawn to the landscape between the United States and Mexico and the particular narratives that are created there. She investigates border-crossing issues of identity, displacement and landscape as a place of memory as they are relevant to the border. Macdonald’s interest is in investigating the notion of fact and fiction, presence and absence, historical construction through her own personal experience and those that she has interviewed about crossing borders.  Border Memory: Crossing Borders, is comprised of a series of prints that include various layers of photolithography drawing and silkscreen. Her work has been included in exhibitions in Canada and Mexico.

Margarita Macdonald is an MFA candidate at York University.  She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from the University of Toronto and a degree in Studio Arts from Sheridan Institute of Technology. Presently, she teaches print media at York University, and has assisted in teaching print media and photography at Sheridan Institute of Technology.

Please join the artists in celebrating their opening on Thursday, April 14 from 6:30-9:30 PM.   Their shows will run until April 24, 2011.