Emily Hermant | Alberta Magazine Awards Finalist

Galleries West is pleased to present a special six-part showcase of stories and videos that have been selected as finalists for the Alberta Magazine Awards. Winners will be announced Sept. 22 at the annual conference of the the Alberta Magazine Publishers Association. Today’s video, nominated in the Digital Project category, was first published Nov. 15, 2021.

Vancouver-based interdisciplinary artist Emily Hermant works with recycled telecommunications and data cables, stripping them down and arranging them into patterns, casting them in silicone to make colourful moulded wall hangings, or creating rippling sculptures from the wires themselves. “The materials that I’m working with have speed built into them,” says Hermant, a professor of sculpture and expanded media at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design. “They have a purpose, which is to connect across these large distances to allow people to communicate really instantaneously.” Her work – on view at the Monte Clark Gallery in Vancouver from Nov. 20 to Dec. 23, 2021 – transforms these fast materials through a slow, meticulous process. “I think we’re living in this culture where things happen so quickly,” says Hermant. “The beauty about being an artist is being able to try to take some of those snapshots and slow them down.”