DONNA WHITE "Cyborg Collars," February 11 to April 29, 2011, The Ledge Gallery, EPCOR Centre, Calgary
"Cyborg Collar"
Donna White, "Cyborg Collar," mixed media, 2010.
DONNA WHITE
Cyborg Collars, February 11 to April 29, The Ledge Gallery, EPCOR Centre, Calgary
BY: Amy Fung
“I still think of myself as a cyborg,” says Calgary-based artist Donna White, whose Cyborg Collarsare a visually alluring metaphor for a collective experience. One of the last graduates of the Interdisciplinary program at the Alberta College of Art and Design, White’s practice mixes sculpture and photography to comment on the roles and expectations historically around women’s lives. “Women assume roles depending on where they are in society,” White says. “With our families, out in public, at work, we transform ourselves to fit roles, and I don’t see a difference between that and the cyborg in films and literature.” The series is made up of four collars sitting on metal armatures, each one made entirely of strips of backlit film hand-sewn and pleated, the film exposed to images of tombstones and frosted windows. “There’s nothing feminine or fibre-related in the collars,” White continues. “And you don’t realize that until you get close to them.”
