|
Tanya Rusnak
- third-generation Ukrainian-Canadian
- lives in Calgary, Alberta
A third-generation Ukrainian-Canadian, Tanya Rusnak considers O Emigratsii, a
mixed media installation she began in 1993, to be an ongoing project of recovery focussing
on Ukrainians who immigrated to Canada prior to World War I. Its inception began with
trips to old Ukrainian settlements in northern Alberta, from which Rusnak recovered
archaeological remnants. Incorporating paintings, archival photographs, found objects and
400 glass boxes containing silk-screened texts, Rusnak engages in a creative re-collection
of the Ukrainian-Canadian immigrant experience by situating the late twentieth-century
viewer within the racist ethno-centric climate of early twentieth-century western Canada.
The lower half of the gallery walls have been painted blue, a colour reminiscent of the
shade of washing blueing and mud plaster applied to the walls of early settler's homes.
The wooden boxes in the installation have been engraved with Ukrainian symbols and words
such as "Muzyk" (peasant), "Zemlia" (earth) and Black Sea, referrants
linking Ukrainian-Canadian immigrants to a common Ukrainian connection to agriculture. O
Emigratsii resonates with the voices and stories of Ukrainian immigrants recounting
their impoverished living conditions and hardships. Rusnak named the installation O
Emigratsii after the title of a book written by Joseph Oleskiw, a Ukrainian
agriculturalist who endeavoured to dispel many of the myths and misleading information
that painted Canada as an agricultural paradise. The white paintings included in the
installation are emblematic of the old Ukrainian headstones, the last vestiges of these
first Ukrainian settlements that Rusnak had seen throughout her childhood. Rusnaks
creative production is impelled by her commitment to retrieving "the signs symbols,
broken narratives and persisting words of the early Ukrainian immigrant" (Bruce
Grenville, 1995).
|
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
1997-5 |
O Emigratsii (On
Emigration)
Edmonton Art Gallery, Edmonton, Alberta; Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge,
Alberta; Ukrainian Cultural and Educational Centre, Winnipeg, Manitoba; Mendel Art
Gallery, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan; Neutral Ground, Regina, Saskatchewan |
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Beatty, Greg. "O Emigratsii: Tanya
Rusnak." Artichoke 9, no. 2 (Summer 1997): 40-43. Canadian Art 13, no. 1 (Spring 1996): 25.
Grenville, Bruce. "Tanya Rusnak." Canadian
Art 12, no. 4 (Winter 1995): 93. |
|