D’Arcy Wilson: The Memorialist

The Owens Art Gallery at Mount Allison University is pleased to announce the opening of D’Arcy Wilson: The Memorialist at 7:30 PM on Friday 4 November. All are welcome to attend.

D’Arcy Wilson is a multidisciplinary artist working primarily in performance and has exhibited her work in solo and group shows across Canada. She holds a BFA from Mount Allison University and an MFA from the University of Calgary. Her work focuses on the relationship between Western Culture and the wilderness, addressing themes of vulnerability, alienation and isolation. In particular, she highlights her inability as a human to connect with wildlife and integrate into nature.

In The Memorialist, Wilson resurrects the little-known historical fact that the first public zoo in North America since the Mayans was located in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The zoological gardens were founded by Andrew Downs in 1849 and grew to be one hundred acres in size, housing regional and exotic species of animals in sprawling wooden enclosures. The opening of this zoo marked the first time that Western Culture in this continent placed wild animals in a “living museum.”

The Memorialist consists of drawings, field notes, video, performance and photographs that collectively highlight the dysfunctional relationship between Western Culture and wildlife, and the transformation of animal into spectacle. By reconstructing how the zoo may have been, Wilson depicts the problematic geographies of the colonial settler and the wild animal.

The Memorialist will remain on view at the Owens Art Gallery until 11 December.

The Memorialist is produced with the support of the province of New Brunswick and the Canada Council for the Arts.