Pilar Mehlis: Current Interloper

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Pilar Mehlis, "Current Interloper," nd

HK INCUBATOR Project Space

Opening Reception, Thursday, April 6th from 5 to 8 pm.

In this body of work I am exploring the transformative effect of immigration on an individual by juxtaposing elements of natural and human migrations. Drawing from my personal experience with immigration to Canada as a child in 1983 and subsequent cyclical migrations to my place of origin in South America (Bolivia) and back to Canada I seek to explore similar patterns of migration in the natural world. In this instance I chose the Chinook salmon as it has migratory patterns which echo my own trajectories up and down the Pacific coast and also for its significant place in West Coast culture.  Immigration is a transformative experience: it takes the original person and “dresses” them in new cultures, languages, sensations, ideas and attitudes.

This transformation creates a hybrid that often belongs to two places and cultures at once and yet not wholly to either. There is a collision between innocence and new experiences involved in such transitions. My work explores these frictions and the ideas of identity, sense of place, transformation and cultural hybridization with particular emphasis on my own transformative experience from being culturally Bolivian to becoming Canadian and how, through cultural narratives, those two identities are embodied within me.

This body of work focuses on the hybrid fish/human figure I call Antrofish. I use it to metaphorically illustrate the many aspects of the migration and immigration experience and in an interesting parallel it also reflects the “migration” of my painted subject matter into the third dimension where, while it is still painted it stands on its own two feet. Through the inherent materiality of the Antrofish sculpture the work metaphorically illustrates the condition of having more than one identity: It is half human and half fish, the Antrofish is also built in two parts: the top is made of painted canvas and treated papers and the bottom (hips and legs) is made of polymer gypsum and encaustic medium.

The final figure (in sculpture, drawing or painting) is comprised of two distinct beings and while it still retains aspects of its origins (human and fish) it emerges as a whole new individual reflecting in its sensibilities a unique cultural genetic code. The result is the discovery of identity perhaps not typical but of value nonetheless. An identity that exists in the negative spaces (visually speaking) or outside of local culture and which can be reflected on by those who choose to see and explore it.