Emerald Queendom

Tammy Salzl’s playful installation addresses adult truths.

by

When the Brothers Grimm set out to collect European folk tales two centuries ago, they didn’t always like what they heard. These ancient fables, recounted by women during communal activities, were gruesome, violent, amoral and often sexually explicit.

Since the brothers’ two volumes were first published in 1812, their stories have continued to be sanitized. For instance, it’s now the stepmother, not the mother, who orders the huntsman to kill Snow White and collect her lungs and liver so she can devour them. In the Frog Prince, the princess kisses the frog instead of throwing him against a wall.

Tammy Salzl’s installation Emerald Queendom – on view online until June 12 at Harcourt House, an artist-run centre in Edmonton – immerses visitors in an enchanted forest filled with fairies. But Salzl’s fairies are not Disneyesque renditions. They take us back to the hearths of ancestral matriarchs who related life as it was: cruel and unpredictable, yet magical.

Even before lifting the black curtain that veils the entrance to the show, you can hear mysterious clatters, trickling streams and rustling leaves. This soundscape – created by Edmonton composer and sound designer Greg Mulyk – sets the stage for Salzl’s table-top mixed-media installations of hills, lakes with videos of underwater life and miniature houses inhabited by strange creatures.

The gallery is dark and eerie, as if it were night, but the forest is coming to life. Beams of light filter through trees and illuminate spiders, mushrooms and fairies whose bodies are part flower and part female. They have large bellies and buttocks, but no breasts. One cradles a dying wasp, others dance, daydream or engage in oral sex.

These scenes are rife with ambiguity. For example, one fairy pees a blue arc above another fairy, who is half submerged in the ground. Her splayed legs reveal a pink floral vagina. Is she dying or emerging from the earth?  Is the stream urine, water or seminal fluid? Is it an act of giving life? Or is it destructive? Or perhaps an erotic fantasy?

A book that influenced Salzl offers clues. The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales, by the controversial Austrian-born psychologist Bruno Bettelheim, interprets fables in psychoanalytic terms. In his view, these narratives help children address overpowering emotions, such as the fear of abandonment. “The child” he writes, “intuitively comprehends that although these stories are unreal, they are not untrue.” 

Bettelheim’s words course through Salzl’s show like a dream that surfaces into waking life. Her childlike installation addresses adult truths: life is overshadowed by death, erotic joy can be tinged with disgust and beauty merges with the grotesque.

Salzl had doubts and fears when she began this work. “There was this weird guilt and shame that I am just playing like I did when I was a kid,” she says. “How is the art world going to view this?”

She needn’t have worried. Her show may be playful and, at times, humorous, but it reveals a vital truth: legends and fables have deep roots. Salzl’s fairies don’t sprinkle pixie dust. Rather, they expose paradoxes within the human psyche. ■  

Tammy Salzl: Emerald Queendom at Harcourt House Artist Run Centre in Edmonton from April 30 to June 12, 2021, can be viewed online, although the gallery is temporarily closed due to pandemic restrictions.

PS: Worried you missed something? See previous Galleries West stories here or sign up for our free biweekly newsletter.

Harcourt logo.jpg

Harcourt House Artist Run Centre

10215 112 Street - 3rd flr, Edmonton, Alberta T5K 1M7

780-426-4180

please enable javascript to view

Visit Website

Mon to Sat 10 am - 5 pm