Impressions of Ambrosia
Group Show at Shelter Brewing, Saskatoon, SK, Canada. Treaty 6 Territory.
August 20th - 27th
Community and connection have always been the driving forces behind The 525.
A cherished space to connect within the community has always been the warm and inviting space that is Shelter Brewing.
On August 20th, join us as we enjoy the warm hospitality, that Shelter is known for combined with an experience that the 525 is known for; a curated exhibition of all-female artists and their artworks, beats by DJ Dev Daddy, and of course the best beer and tacos in town.
For one night only, Shelter will be selling a specialty cocktail inspired by the evening; proceeds to Prairie Harm Reduction, a cause close to all of our hearts.
Curatorial Statement
As the heat of summer finds its way to its natural end, we find ourselves preparing for a new season’s harvest. Reminders of what we honour and create abundance in our lives are all consuming. Nurturing what is left in this late summer harvest to ensure opulence in the next.
This is the season’s last deep breath. the sensational warmth of golden hour’s glow upon your content skin; the flavours of its brilliant palette; the colours of summer that brought you here. These monuments of the season will end, but their impressions will live on within us if we drink in its ambrosia.
THE ARTISTS
Xiao Han is a Saskatoon-based artist and curator originally from Wuhan, China. Han's creative practice focuses on photography, performance, and social practice. Han's research explores immigrants’ identity, contemporary gender issues, and environmental media through decolonial lens. Han produced projects investigating the Chinese one-child policy, Chinese Canadian restaurant and family, and the aesthetic of relationships through visual art.
In 2017, Xiao Han installed her first public art, "Yee Clun," at Regina's Art Park. This public artwork speaks of the racial discrimination suffered by Chinese restaurant owners under Saskatchewan's "White Woman Labour Law" passed in 1912. Since then, Xiao has devoted herself to researching Saskatchewan's Chinese restaurants' history. In 2021, Han curated a community-based project, "MIXING RICE," which facilitated a in-situ exhibition in Asian restaurants. In 2022, Han created socially engaged project, "Dough Nation," which collaborate with community fridge and Chinese restaurant to share food as a gesture of compassion.
Rowen Dinsmore is an emerging artist and a Bachelor of Fine Arts Honours graduate from the University of Saskatchewan. Using a variety of mediums, including painting, printmaking, and video, she explores the topic of self-portraiture as a means to investigate identity and the self; using these mediums to develop layers that abstract and complicate the portrait.
Influenced by social media and art history, Rowen studies what it means to be a woman in the modern era through an artistic lens, often approaching topics of spectatorship, the gaze, and the feminine form. Her work offers both a critique and an embrace of these aspects of the female experience in a post-internet world. She approaches her mediums and turns them into colourful reflections of herself; each work being a conceptual or representational self-portrait. Her work is an accumulation of her experiences, perspectives, and fascinations. Though her work is self-reflective, she hopes that viewers may see themselves and their experiences within the work.
Abriana Fortugno is an artist currently working with multiple mediums such as painting, printmaking, drawing, and graphic design. Heavily inspired by Jean Michel Basquiat, she leans more towards bold abstraction and vibrant colours, but has lately been exploring themes of abstract portraiture and simple abstraction. Her work is ever evolving and expanding into new ideas to bring into existence.
Art for arts sake is the central theme of her practice, as creating for commercial purposes inhibits her ability to create without distraction. With a tendency to paint without a deeper influence or meaning, her ideas find their way from her imagination and onto the surface of her canvas or paper. Interpretation is open-ended and encouraged to be taken as it comes to the viewer.
Abriana has taken a recent interest in textiles and sewing, with a goal to soon expand her practice into fashion and her own line of merch.
Beni Shen, a dynamic multimedia artist hailing from Shanghai and now based in Saskatoon, is a graduate of the University of Saskatchewan with a BFAH degree. With a former career as an ER nurse, her art captures life's fragility and the essence of human existence. Her creative recipe blends wonder, dreams, and emotions, stirred with identity, memory, and imagination, resulting in a captivating buffet of mind-boggling themes.
Beni's artistry takes viewers on a personal journey into identity and imagination, encouraging unique perceptions and introspection. From figurines with superhero potential to landscapes that spin minds, her carefully arranged pieces evoke delightful confusion. Her art oscillates between figurative and abstract realms, whispering surreal tales and conjuring artsy storms.
Inspired by fragmented memories, social media, movie frames, collages, and digital art, Beni's work offers a daring exploration of the subconscious. It's an emotional roller coaster ride of self-discovery and a captivating invitation to explore the depths of identity and imagination. In her art, viewers find a fascinating blend of complexity, challenge, and profound curiosity.
Jaden Pierce is a an abstract painter from Saskatoon, believing that art serves several purposes in her life. As a space in which to explore the incommunicable. A meditative practice. A form of research and meaning-making. A conduit for connection. To her own nervous system, to her environment, and to those who experience her work through an exchange of emotional energy to step outside her “self” and reflect on the larger system of connections she is part of.
She loves to learn from a variety of mediums within her creative process. Continual experimentation fosters creative play and intuition, maintaining whimsy, childlike wonder, and hope as essential to her work. She explores her own construction of identity, using symbols from her childhood and ancestry. Morphing these with experiences of interconnection between human, animal, and plant systems, in both physical and imaginary worlds. In this way she seeks to imagine possibilities for different realities.
