December 2014
La Petite Mort Gallery presents
MEAGHAN HAUGHIAN / Ebb and Flow
December 5, 2014 – January 4, 2015
Vernissage Friday December 5 / 7 – 10pm.
Statement
I didn’t set out to make this exhibition about my Mom but she kept emerging. Last year she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. After emptying her Toronto home of its contents, I was left with a pile of boxes that I still don’t know what to do with but can’t throw out. Hundreds of photos capture elements of my mom that I will never know.
Ebb and flow continues my exploration into collective human experience, personal history and the dualities of life, but with a different approach to the content and materials. In these mixed media collages, I have let the photographic and painted areas exist as they are rather than blending them together. They are absent of the partially legible handwriting typically layered in my work. And most significantly, they are not narrative-driven.
This recent body of work reflects upon the unfathomable: the tangible and ethereal; the past and future; the vastness of the sky and the minuteness of neurons. Contemplative and intimate, each piece captures a moment in time and a state of being. My mom is preserved in the early stages of her adult life while thoughts and emotions revolve and drip around her, attempting to connect. Like the images that are depicted – a wreath, a cloud, an ambiguous space – these artworks have no beginning or end. They are meditations on grief, understanding and acceptance. How do you mourn a life that isn’t over?
Meaghan Haughian combines paint, photographs, collage, text and found objects to explore the experiences and emotions that we share collectively as human beings but often experience in isolation. She merges real and imagined narratives in an ongoing search for links between life’s contradictions and dualities. Meaghan earned her BFA (Printmaking & Photography) from Mount Allison University. She has received grants from the City of Ottawa and the Ontario Arts Council, and her work is included in numerous private and public collections, including the Ottawa Art Gallery, the City of Ottawa and the National Art Centre’s French Theatre.