Perennials
Winnie Truong’s interest in distorted beauty plays out in recent drawings that merge elaborate coiffure and botanical motifs. She brings a contemporary whimsy to Victorian aesthetics.
Winnie Truong, “Pintucked,” 2018
chalk pastel and cut-paper collage, 59.5” x 50”
Winnie Truong’s exhibition, Perennials, features flowers, vines and forests, all seamlessly woven into elaborate hairstyles and decorative landscapes. On view at VivianeArt in Calgary until June 9, Truong’s intricate drawings in coloured pencil, pastel and cut-paper collage illustrate her continuing fascination with distorted beauty. Exploiting parallels between anatomy and botany as well as grooming and landscaping, she creates a narrative where feminine waves, braids and curls are more animated than the women beneath.
A first impulse on viewing the show’s 12 works may be to connect with traditional ideals about femininity and nature. Yet a deceptive Victorian sensuality plays in subtle contrast to her earthy garden colours and densely meticulous lines. Twisted and entwined within masses of meandering, sinuous locks, Truong’s women seem to sprout flora and fauna from every part of their bodies, including hands and mouths, seemingly entrapped or, perhaps, caught in transition. The sensuousness of her compositions makes it difficult to discern whether these elaborate configurations protect and embellish or are a diabolical invasion of the female body.
Winnie Truong, “Seasonal Breakout,” 2018
coloured pencils and cut-paper collage, 28” x 22”
Truong’s subjects have blindingly long bangs or hives of hair that obscure their eyes or entire faces, which are often turned away. In Seasonal Breakout and Terrace, exaggerated bangs curl heavily over the women’s eyes while flowers spring up, irrepressible, from perfect coiffures. Both beautiful and disturbing, they carry a hidden cultural payload. The hairstyles reveal something about the women. But in all cases, the painstakingly groomed, shaped and ornamented hair is disturbed by wild growth. In Terrace, the hair, streaked with golden highlights and encased in a golden halo, sprouts tiny tendrils that won’t be so easily controlled. Wild thoughts spring from wild hair. Both Bandages and Unfurled and Unfocused, constrained and intimately sized drawings rendered in deep forest green, seem ready to burst or unwind themselves at the smallest provocation.
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Winnie Truong, “Moth and Mother,” 2018
coloured pencils and cut-paper collage, 19.5’ x 19.5”
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Winnie Truong, “The Offer,” 2018
coloured pencils and cut-paper collage, 19.5’ x 19.5”
In other pieces, such as Moth and Mother and Three Times the Hurry, the Toronto-based artist wields her beautifully rendered cut-paper drawings into ornamental landscapes inhabited by female figures with flowing hair and an abundance of wild foliage. Engulfed by vegetation, the women navigate the trappings of nature, often making it difficult to discern where figures begin and nature ends. These works seem less about communion with nature and more about being consumed by it.
Given Truong’s nymph-like characters and floral embellishments, it’s easy to focus on her traditional skills in drawing. Yet there’s something peculiarly contemporary about her aesthetic. The fairy-tale quality somehow conjures up real-world anxiety and excess. She has created a garden of earthly delights where consumption is turned inside out through a whimsical display of Victorian aesthetics and the absurd. ■
Perennials is on view at VivianeArt in Calgary from April 27 to June 9, 2018.
VivianeArt
1018 9 Avenue SE, Calgary, Alberta T2G 0H7
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Wed to Sat 11 am - 6 pm; Sun noon - 5 pm
