Leisure, "How one becomes what one is"

November 19, 2017 – January 18, 2018

2nd floor vitrines and Digital Collections Discovery counters

Concordia Library is proud to present How one becomes what one is – a project organized by Leisure (Meredith Carruthers and Susannah Wesley) and based on research they carried out as artists in residence at Concordia’s Visual Collections Repository (VCR) in 2018. The VCR is an academic resource that provides visual documentation to support the research and teaching needs of the Faculty of Fine Arts. The VCR Residency Program invites artists, like Leisure, to explore and interpret their unique visual resources.

During their residency, Leisure explored the collections of both VCR and the Canadian Women Artists History Initiative (CWAHI) at Concordia. They also took this opportunity to reflect upon traditional documentary practices around women artists in general. For their Webster Library installation, Leisure draws inspiration from the extensive visual collections of VCR, the role of slide presentations in the history of art pedagogy, and an early 20th century play by Lina Loos (1882-1950). The unexpected transformation and juxtaposition of art images in How one becomes what one is brings new meaning to how we experience art through visual documentation.