Vera Frenkel
Vera Frenkel (born November 10, 1938) is a Canadian multidisciplinary artist.[1] Her installations, videotapes, performances and new media projects address the forces at work in human migration, the learning and unlearning of cultural memory, and the ever-increasing bureaucratization of experience.[2]
| Vera Frenkel | |
|---|---|
| Born |
November 10, 1938 Bratislava, Czechoslovakia |
| Education | Fine Arts |
| Alma mater | McGill University(1959), |
| Notable work | String Games, ...from the Transit Bar, ONCE NEAR WATER: Notes from the Scaffolding Archive (2008), The Blue Train (2012-2014) |
| Awards | Governor General's Awards in Visual and Media Arts (2005) |
| Website |
www |
Vera Frenkel was born in Czechoslovakia, lived in England during her childhood then resided in Canada for her adult life. Frenkel graduated with a degree in Fine Arts from McGill University in 1959, then pursued further studies in Montreal under Arthur Lismer and Albert Dumouchel.
She has exhibited in solo and group shows in Canada and internationally since the early 1970s. Her work has been exhibited at Documenta IX, the Offenes Kulturhaus, Linz; the Setagaya Art Museum, Tokyo, the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Biennale di Venezia.[3]
Major Exhibitions
Frenkel's solo exhibitions include:
- Likely Stories: Text/Image/Sound Works for Video and Installation (Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, Ontario, 1982)
- Raincoats, Suitcases, Palms (Art Gallery of York University, Toronto, 1993)
- ...from the Transit Bar (Museum Fridericianum, Kassel, The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto, 1994–95, and National Gallery of Canada, 1996)
- Body Missing (Offenes Kulturhaus, Linz, Austria 1996; Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst, Bremen, Germany, 1996–97).
In recent years, Frenkel has exhibited her works at Centre culturel canadien (Paris, 2002) and the Freud Museum (London, UK, 2003).
Examples of Frenkel's group exhibitions:
- OKanada (Akademie der Künste, Berlin, 1982–83)
- Vestiges of Empire (Camden Arts Centre, London, UK, 1984)
- documenta IX (Kassel, Germany, 1992)
- Shifting Paradigms (Bucharest, 1994)
- Beyond National Identities (Tokyo, Kyoto, and Sapporo, Japan, 1995)
- "Archival Dialogues: Reading the Black Star Collection" (Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 2012)
One of Frenkel's major works, ...from the Transit Bar, is a seminal work of Canadian contemporary art. It was a collaboration between the National Gallery of Canada and The Power Plant. It was initially exhibited in 1992 at documenta IX in Kassel, Germany, toured Europe in the 1990s and has been most recently re-exhibited at the National Gallery of Canada in the spring and summer of 2014. ...from the Transit Bar was a multi-media installation with a functioning bar and video monitors playing individuals' testimonials recounting themes such as exile, translation and cultural migration.[4]
ONCE NEAR WATER: Notes from the Scaffolding Archive (2008) is a videotape about a city cut off from its lake and uses the scaffolding as a metaphor for both aspiration and loss. In the opening lines of its voice over narrative discuss the lake and set the stage for the piece:
This report is about a lake, and about longing.
Also about greed, and about ways of bearing witness.
I don't know the whole story, one never does.
[5]
Between November 15 and December 28, 2014, the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art presented Ways of Telling, an exhibition presenting Frenkel's work from the early 1970s to present, including her more recent works ONCE NEAR WATER: Notes from the Scaffolding Archive (2008) and The Blue Train (2012–2014). The exhibit was curated by the National Gallery of Canada's Jonathan Shaughnessy.[6]
Awards
Frenkel is recipient of the Canada Council Molson Prize, the Toronto Arts Foundation Visual Arts Award, the 1993 Gershon IskowitzPrize, the 1999 Bell Canada Award for Video Art and the 2007 iDMAa Pioneering Achievement Award.[7] In 2005 she was awarded the Governor General's Awards in Visual and Media Arts by the Canada Council for the Arts.[8]
Bibliography
- Sigrid Schade (ed.); Vera Frenkel; Dot Tuer; Anne Benichou; Griselda Pollock; Ryszard W. Kluszcynski; John Bentley Mays; Elizabeth Legge; Sylvie Lacerte; Frank Wagner (2013). Sigrid Schade, ed. Vera Frenkel. Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz. ISBN 9783775732475.
- The Power Plant and the National Gallery (ed.); Jean Gagnon. Vera Frenkel:...from the Transit Bar. Toronto,ON: The Power Plant, the National Gallery of Canada. ISBN 0921047754.
References
- ↑ "Vera Frenkel". The Canadian Encyclopedia. Retrieved 1 February 2014.
- ↑ verafrenkel.com
- ↑ Selected Exhibitions, Cartographie d'un pratique / Mapping a Practice, Daniel Langlois Foundation 2010
- ↑ http://www.gallery.ca/en/see/exhibitions/current/details/from-the-transit-bar-7569
- ↑ VeraFrenkel.com
- ↑ http://www.mocca.ca/exhibition/vera-frenkel/
- ↑ "International Digital Media and Arts Association - Award Winners". http://idmaa.org. International Digital Media and Arts Association. Retrieved 9 February 2014. External link in
|work=(help) - ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on February 21, 2014. Retrieved February 9, 2014.