TRANSFORM: Exploring Languages of Healing

Alanna Kibbe

Opening Thursday, March 31, 5 pm

Canadian Language Museum. 2275 Bayview Avenue, York University Glendon Campus

TRANSFORM seeks to deconstruct what artist Alanna Gail Kibbe calls “The Languages of Healing”. The creative expression of breast cancer survival, living with chronic pain and long term injuries, and transformation through the spiritual navigation of chronic illness, this exhibition walks one through different versions of healing the artist has moved through to survive and rise towards thriving.
 
Each of the pieces represents different versions of healing: The cocoon. Transformation. Rising through metaphorical death. Grief. Finding home within. Releasing the costume. Discovering flights of freedom. Re-becoming stardust. 
 
Exhibition attendees will be invited to participate in an interactive activity representative of the interdependence and community care the artist identifies as core components to the healing languages communicated through the work. Throughout the exhibition, the artist will collect the interactive components completed by attendees, to weave them into the piece itself, thus having interactive participants become part of the work.

The Canadian language Museum is located in the Glendon Campus and can be reached by TTC by taking bus #124 from Lawrence station to Sunny Brook.

if you cycle, it is located 12 km from Downtown Toronto

A body's torso is seen, clothed, arms draped across itself. The arms bones are visible, as if the skin and muscle around them are transparent. The arms wrap around an oversized anatomical heart, so big it is almost the size of the whole chest. The heart is representative of homecoming, and is cradled by the arms like a child. From the heart emanates light.
Carried Home by (Only) Bones Acrylics and charcoal on canvas Alanna Gail Kibbe 2020
a portrait of Alanna Kibbe in her Studio. she wears a tanktop with animal prints and a light blue bottom, and a pair of glasses with transparent rims
Alanna Gail Kibbe in her Studio

Alanna Gail Kibbe is a multi-media artist and writer, based in Toronto, Ontario. She began her current era of creative work after her body retired her from midwifery, moving her from a world governed by birth into a world of making magic and art as medicine. A fierce disability justice advocate, Alanna’s work centres healing and transformation in both her artistic processes, and her work’s presentation as rooted in community. Her work is marked by lived resilience, passionate survival, and the transition from sickness to beauty-in-imperfection. Her practices of meditation, martial arts, and journaling to vision the future are interwoven into her creative process. She is also a mother, a gardener and herbal medicine maker, and a lover of community building and community care.

Two skeletal bodies are wrapped around each other, in holding and protection, within a womb-like cocoon. Despite lightning striking, attempting to wash the self away, the cactus flowers bloom under a dark sky. Transformed into all the new versions of the self that can become, the raven sits atop the cocoon, guarding one of the skeletons hearts for safe keeping. The other heart remains within the cocoon, giving life to both figures.
Hope Cocoon Acrylics on canvas Alanna Gail Kibbe 2020

Many thanks to the Canadian Language Museum for hosting this show

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