THE BEYOND WITHIN, ANNIE MACDONELL

Illingworth Kerr Gallery, AUArts
January 19 – March 11

As a surface with only one side, the Möbius strip resists orientation. To trace its path is to experience left becoming right, outside flipping in, and time assuming the shape of an infinite loop. The perimeter of a Möbius strip is defined, but the twist in the loop prevents predictability. Within static institutions and other familiar containers, is it possible to experience a similar twist – a radical detour – that encourages us to build our worlds anew?

Underpinned by feminist conceptions of the everyday as a basis for political engagement with the world, Annie MacDonell’s predominantly lens-based practice questions how images are constituted and circulated. Beginning from the photographic impulse to capture and frame, MacDonell frequently uses found images to propose strategies for our personal and political reorientations. MacDonell’s recent work looks to under-recognized sites of experimentation as full of artistic and political possibility: psychedelic experience as a means to dissolve the ego and generate new models of collectivity is central to the works in The Beyond Within. This multi-part video installation is informed by historical and contemporary psychedelic trials performed within research settings.

Juxtaposing text, drawings and photographs sourced from early psychedelic trials, and architectural sets that recall the institutional examination rooms in which these trials took place, MacDonell’s works propose a boundary between the subject and viewer that is not only marginal, but porous and continuously shifting. By making use of radical and lateral modes of thinking and storytelling, MacDonell affirms how art can be both a necessary clarifier and serve as an essential tool in world building.

Organized and circulated by The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, in collaboration with the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery. Curated by Leila Timmins and Crystal Mowry.

Open: Tue - Fri: 11:00 - 18:00 & Sat: 12:00 - 16:00
Access: Location is wheelchair accessible. Exhibition is child friendly.
For more information see auarts.ca/ikg

AUArts, 1407 14th Avenue NW, Calgary, AB T2N 4R3