The Natalie Brettschneider Archive is an ongoing series by Vancouver-based artist Carol Sawyer that features photographs, texts, a video, and music recitals to reconstruct the life and work of a historical genre-blurring performance artist. Brettschneider’s narrative is interwoven with references to people and places that Sawyer has uncovered in her process of research, and by the site-specific insertion of historical artworks and archival material. As a feminist critique of art historical narrative conventions, Sawyer’s project illuminates the persistent gaps and omissions of official histories, and the ways in which photographs are used to support cultural assumptions about gender, age, authorship, and art-making.
Sawyer is the second artist to be featured in CUAG’s Collection Invitational (CI) series. The CI series creates artist-led, open-ended opportunities to research and activate the collection through a week-long research residency at CUAG and subsequent exhibition. It stimulates the production of new artworks and fresh ways of seeing and thinking about the Carleton University collection.
Check out the video of Carol Sawyer’s CUAG performance at the opening reception on January 18th. We thank Landon Arbuckle and Lewis Gordon for their great work on this video!
CUAG acknowledges the support of Library and Archives Canada / Bibliothèque et Archives Canada and National Gallery of Canada / Musée des beaux-arts du Canada as lenders to the exhibition.