BEAUTIFUL PARASITES

Tammy Salzl

Vernon Public Art Gallery

January 11 - March 5, 2024

Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Vernon Public Art Gallery, 3228 - 31st Avenue, Vernon, British Columbia, V1T 2H3, Canada

January 11 - March 5, 2024

Production: Vernon Public Art Gallery

Editor: Lubos Culen

Layout and graphic design: Vernon Public Art Gallery

Front cover: The Melancholia of Lady Macbeth, oil on canvas, 213cm x 152cm (84” x 60”), 2019

Printing: Get Colour Copies, Vernon, British Columbia, Canada

ISBN 978-1-927407-81-3

Copyright © 2024 Vernon Public Art Gallery

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted by the 1976 Copyright Act or in writing from the Vernon Public Art Gallery. Requests for permission to use these images should be addressed in writing to the Vernon Public Art Gallery, 3228 31st Avenue, Vernon BC, V1T 2H3, Canada. Telephone: 250.545.3173, website: www. vernonpublicartgallery.com.

The Vernon Public Art Gallery is a registered not-for-profit society. We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Greater Vernon Advisory Committee/RDNO, the Province of BC’s Gaming Policy and Enforcement Branch, British Columbia Arts Council, the Government of Canada, corporate donors, sponsors, general donations and memberships. Charitable Organization # 108113358RR.

This exhibition is sponsored in part by:

Table Of Contents

1 Executive Director’s Foreword · Dauna Kennedy

3 Beautiful Parasites - Introduction · Lubos Culen

6 Embracing Shadows · Agnieszka Matejko

10 Artist Statement · Tammy Salzl

13 Images of Artwork in the Exhibition

32 Curriculum Vitae · Tammy Salzl

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR’S FOREWORD

On behalf of the Board of Directors and the Vernon Public Art Gallery staff, I am pleased to welcome the exhibition by Edmonton based artist and educator (University of Alberta) Tamy Salzl titled Beautiful Parasites as our opening exhibition for 2024. Salzl is an internationally exhibiting artist with a focus on multimedia works that include painting, drawing, sculpture, video, and film. This particular exhibition focuses on storytelling from an ecological perspective with narratives from different cultures and historical events.

I’d like to thank our guest writer for this publication, Agnieszka Matejko. A freelance writer Matejko regularly writes for Galleries West while also maintaining her own artistic practice focusing on youth and children as well as collaborative public art projects. Word on the Street is an example of one of her installations where poetry by inner-city residents was sandblasted onto sidewalks in the McCauley neighbourhood of Edmonton.

Thank you to Lubos Culen, Curator for the VPAG and the rest of the gallery team for working together to enrich the lives of our gallery visitors through critical programming that expands visual literacy within our community.

Thanks to our funders such as the Province of BC, BC Arts Council and the Regional District of the North Okanagan, we are able to exhibit work such as this for the people of the North Okanagan. Our donors, members and sponsors also contribute to the success of our programming and we are grateful for their support.

See you at the VPAG, Dauna

Kennedy Executive Director Vernon Public Art Gallery

TAMMY SALZL: BEAUTIFUL PARASITES - INTRODUCTION

Tammy Salzl’s exhibition titled Beautiful Parasites is a multi-media installation consisting of paintings, sculptural objects, video, and sound composed by Canadian composer Greg Mulyk. Salzl’s artwork is quite overtly surrealistic and ambiguous in meaning. The artwork employs imagery which is obscure, and it provides visual cues for the viewer to decipher possible parallel narratives. The subject matter is multilayered and often incorporates Salzl’s autobiographical references and parallel interpretations of appropriated narratives and imagery.

Generally, there are several dominant themes in Salzl’s artwork. The artwork is a commentary on the human condition often associated with societal norms and status. Some of the works examine consequences of human stewardship within the frame of ecological damage caused by development of heavy industry. The portrayal of human protagonists and animals is almost grotesque with dark undertones inevitably resulting in the feeling of fear and anxiety. Salzl’s work is influenced by surrealist art resulting in dreamlike scenes populated by real and imagined creatures.

An Hour of Silence for Leonora is Salzl’s homage to British-born surrealist painter Leonora Carrington. The small sculpture is an expression of hybridity which includes an arachnoid body with human head and hands. The commentary on human condition, and cycles of mortality and rebirth is encapsulated in another small sculpture titled Bloom. Similarly, the concern about vanishing coral reefs is retold through the legend of mythical monster Medusa whose blood entered the sea and it was transformed into corals.

Believers is presented as a doll house which serves as a metaphor for childhood and domesticity. Inside, the parents are watching scenes from a nature documentary produced in 1958. In 1982 the CBC’s 5th Estate exposed the nature documentary to be fake footage. In constructing the dollhouse and focusing on the manufactured nature documentary, Salzl work serves as a metaphor and critique of the era of ‘alternative facts’.

In addition to themes of human condition, environment, and political critique, Salzl brings to attention some religious practices. In Purity Ball, Salzl’s painting is linked to the ‘purity ball’ event practiced in conservative Christian communities in the USA. It is attended by fathers and daughters and focused on promoting virginity until marriage.

In Sunday Best, Salzl presents the image of conjoined twins with one body and two heads. This artwork, while grotesque, brings to attention the notion of what is beautiful and normal contrasted with the sentiment of what it is to be in an outdated freak show. Indirectly, this artwork also plays on the symbolism of dual power in some mythological narratives.

In the painting Puss Gets an Avatar, Salzl uses humor to critique people’s presence on the Internet and specifically the use of avatars. She points out that in the current ‘metaverse’ people create avatars, identities which are not real, but constructed and presented as independent assumed entities.

The painting Thumbelina is loosely based on the fairy tale titled Thumbelina written by Hans Christian Andersen and published in 1835. The story about the small, magical white girl is a tale about self-determination. In Salzl’s interpretation, the image of Thumbelina is a self-assured black woman confronting the viewer with a powerful gaze. The inclusion of images of ants references the power of nature and humanity’s reliance on various pollinators.

Salzl’s critique of humans’ stewardship of nature is again reflected in the sculpture titled Conjuring Time. The sculpture has a complex set of identifiers which reference the existential nature of human activity upon the environment. Salzl introduces an image of ‘nature witch’, who is casting a spell to gain more time for humanity to solve environmental issues.

The Melancholia of Lady Macbeth is partially based on the Shakespearean character of Lady Macbeth and Ophelia. Salzl’s created a hybrid character that represents the melding of the two characters into a personage which can challenge the ingrained misogyny and constructed societal codes placed on women.

Ginger the Happy Centaur is a painting which addresses the issue of gender and ethnic inequality. It is partially based on Greek mythology where the Centaurs (half-horse and half-human creatures) were predominantly portrayed as males. Salzl’s inspiration was also influenced by the video M.I.A, Born Free1 which graphically portrayed a genocide on red-haired people.

The painting titled Gaia conveys more of Salzl’s concerns about the environment. Gaia personified the Earth goddess in Greek mythology and currently the Earth scientists use the name in the context of Earth’s existence as a living organism. The painting presents Gaia as exhausted and emaciated while still trying to correct the imbalance in the environment caused by humans.2

Salzl’s exhibition Beautiful Parasites is packed with different potential narratives and subject matter. Even though the exhibition has strong environmental undertones and messaging, Salzl’s subject matter extends to questions of female identity(ies), human condition, ecology, politics, and religion. Examined through Feminist lenses, Salzl’s protagonists are powerful messengers on the side of progress and ready to recognize what actions are to be taken. Despite the positive messaging regarding the subject matter, Salzl creates environments which have a propensity to invoke uncertainty and anxiety. In her often-surrealistic rendering of the figures and animals, the viewer is invited to decipher possible narratives which are not linear; on the contrary, the possible narratives have a verticality of meaning instead of proposing a ‘grand’ narrative. Salzl’s modus operandi includes a strong analysis of the sources – current and historical narratives – and consequent synthesis further creating new relationships between the protagonists and the environments they occupy.

Lubos Culen

Curator, Vernon Public Art Gallery

Endnotes:

1 https://vimeo.com/11219730; accessed December 6, 2023

2 Author’s note: the references to Tammy Salzl’s artwork in this writing were partially based on her short descriptions of artworks as outlined in the file titled Vernon_description.PDF created on September 17, 2023, and emailed to the curator