Centre launches new COVID-19 inspired exhibit
SYDNEY – The Cape Breton Centre for Craft and Design has launched a new art exhibit featuring artwork reflecting on the COVID-19 pandemic.
Announced in a release, the Growth and Transitions: A Pandemic Perspective exhibit features the works of Teena Marie Fancey, Susan Paddon, Victoria Piersig and Juliana Scherzer and is now on display in the centre's loft.
"The actual unveiling of this exhibition has had to bend to the whims of the pandemic and its restrictions, just like all of us," said Fancey. "The work was created for this project during a 12month period by individual artists working in isolation during the first and second waves of a global pandemic.
Looking at the work created for this show reminds me of how far we've come and how long it seems we've been standing in place."
The exhibit is the result of the Cape Breton-unamaʼki Creative Sector Legacy Project launched in spring 2020 to employ multi-disciplinary artists to create work documenting the COVID-19 pandemic.
The centre said the program's goal was also to encourage continued community engagement with arts and culture during the pandemic.
“To be a professional artist often means living with precarity, and me and my fellow artists in this exhibition are no exception,” said Piersig, a fine art photographer.
“This exhibition has been postponed twice. When hanging the work, I marvelled at how my perception of our work changed upon finally seeing it together in one place. An absolute pleasure. The digital world has been a good stopgap, but as the pandemic has taught us all – it does not replace the real thing."
The exhibition will be on display until March 19.