Five Manitoba Artists Cope with Pandemic Isolation

Managing anxiety and loneliness through introspection, cultural traditions and the absurd.

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One focus for Manitoba artists during the pandemic has been how life has changed over the last year – and how people have adapted to challenging new circumstances. The province faced a long and gloomy lockdown over the winter, although galleries are open again, albeit at reduced capacity. In this second instalment of our five-part pandemic tour of Western Canada, we talk to artists exploring absurdity and the bizarre as they cope with isolation. Meanwhile, Winnipeg’s artist-run centres have been working to support their communities in new ways. For instance, Mentoring Artists for Women’s Arts teamed up with the University of Manitoba’s Institute for the Humanities to offer $300 micro-grants for art projects that explore care, caring and being careful, another theme the pandemic has brought to the fore.

Karen Asher 

Winnipeg artist Karen Asher is used to working with people. Her 2019 exhibition, Class, at the city’s Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art was based on 25 people dancing together, which allowed her to capture odd interactions between individual bodies. For her new video, A Sad Slow Dance, Asher focuses on one dancer surrounded by four mannequins. “The pandemic set the tone for this work,” she says. “It forced me to work in a way that was even more absurd.” The strangeness of the video, which premieres online March 24 via the Young Lungs Dance Exchange, a Winnipeg network of dancers and movement-based artists, highlights the longing for connection we feel so poignantly now, as well as our collective loneliness and sense of isolation. Asher, who uses humour to cope with anxiety and depression, finds a sense of the absurd is helpful during the pandemic. “This video is sad, but also kind of bizarre, which together is kind of the essence of the world right now.” 

Linda Diffey

While Linda Diffey was isolating in Winnipeg with her mother, a Plains Cree elder originally from Peepeekisis First Nation, she heard her mother’s stories about quarantining on her home reserve as a child after a suspected tuberculosis outbreak. The two also discussed the racism Indigenous people face when seeking medical care and health education, the topic Diffey is working on for her doctoral thesis at the University of Manitoba. To comfort herself at a challenging time, Diffey took up traditional beadwork. Her kaleidocycle, comprised of six tetrahedrons – triangular pyramids – can be twisted to reveal four different views. Its visual narrative revisits oral history, celebrates Indigenous resurgence and documents her experience during the pandemic. The project, she says, was her way to “bring together the meaningful conversations I was having with my mother and the beading processes I was learning.” Twisted one way, the tetrahedrons juxtapose the spiky coronavirus with isolated individuals. In another position, Diffey's beading shows how a cat and dog bring balance to her household by reminding her to find joy in the everyday. Other themes are the women in Diffey’s family and the impacts of colonization. A floral motif honours traditional beadwork, while representing the strength she draws from her Indigenous culture. “It is through this connection that the generations of my family have survived colonial harms," she says. "And it's the key to resilience in the face of current and future challenges.”

Chase Martin 

When the pandemic hit, Chase Martin, an emerging Winnipeg artist interested in themes related to masculinity, gender expression and sexual identity, had to transition his practice from a shared studio to his home. The move meant giving up sculpture and oil painting and moving to simpler media, such as pencil crayon. Anticipating the lockdowns ahead, he also brought home the largest piece of paper he could find. Then he got to work. His drawing, Puppets, depicts a bored person in front of a window that looks out to a world that can no longer be accessed. The imagery refers to previous summers at a crowded beach, highlighting the tedium of isolating indoors. Martin also reflects aspects of his inner dialogue as he used the time alone to ponder who he is, how he presents himself and how to bring together different aspects of himself. “I became aware that I was self-consciously omitting and censoring certain parts of my personality as I shifted social groups,” he says. “I suppose everyone does this to a degree, but I struggled with what I had recognized as a fractured presentation of myself.” 

Tayler Buss 

Emerging Winnipeg artist Tayler Buss often photographs domestic settings. Her 2019 show, Red, at the Flux Gallery in Winnipeg, for instance, explored cultural identity by contrasting Western and Chinese household objects. But during the pandemic, Buss found the isolation was draining her motivation and decided to explore the uncanny in her work. “Improvisation and finding different ways to look at my surroundings helped me to enjoy being at home,” she says. For instance, Buss, who is studying fine arts at the University of Manitoba, playfully shifts the narrative around common household items, using her creativity to avoid feeling trapped. Yet, curiously, her photographs evoke a sense of entrapment. Everyday items placed in unusual circumstances – like lit birthday candles bandaged to her fingers or a stack of pillows cinched together with a belt – help her visualize her pandemic anxieties. Since photographs capture only a moment in time, her images may leave us wondering what transpired before and worried about what may happen next, a common sentiment during the pandemic. 

Charlotte Sigurdson

To make sense of the pandemic, Winnipeg artist Charlotte Sigurdson turned to her interest in history and began reading about the deadly influenza outbreak in 1918. “I was sort of freaked out and morbidly fascinated at the same time,” says Sigurdson, who left a career as a lawyer to explore her interest in the arts. Her research led her to a simple playground chant children recited at the time: “I had a little bird / His name was Enza / I opened the door / And in-flu-enza!” Inspired, she started work on a series of dolls that feature a bird named Enza. Her eerie creation is portrayed as a dapper Regency-era man with the head of a crow. Sigurdson describes him as “a charming ghost from the past” who travels through time, infecting unsuspecting people. Enza appears in other pieces by Sigurdson. In one, a doll cradles him in her lap, and, in another, a woman isolating in her home is surrounded by framed portraits of him. ■  

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