fbpx

About Exhibitions

Exhibitions encourage public engagement, bridging cultures and building strong communities through the arts.

Margaret Joba-Woodruff : Split Limbs / Gentle Body
December 9, 2022 - March 7, 2023
District Gallery, Lynn Valley Library
Artist Reception: February 23, 2023 | 6pm

 

Artist Statement:

In Split Limbs / Gentle Body, both traditional and experimental printmaking techniques are used to form connections between my skin’s battle with chronic eczema and how I relate my own bodily presence to the lands that I have been a guest on. The prints attempt to construct an ongoing allegory of skin as an imagined barrier between the body and the land; a porous membrane which often upholds the illusion of human bodies as separate from other natural bodies. By using labour intensive and intimate print techniques like stone lithography, copper etching and collagraphy, my process of making is often mirrored in the concepts and imagery of the works.

Included in this collection of works is a series of collagraph prints that use flattened bandage boxes as the matrix, merging the familiar shapes of mass produced paper products with traditional intaglio printing. The images of the peeling bark of the Arbutus tree, the Paper Birch tree and the Joshua tree are made through the act of slicing and carefully peeling off layers of waxy paper from the boxes. To me, these images invite reflection on themes of injury, healing, care and kinship. Through this practice, I negotiate my sense of agency over my body in parallel to questions of agency over the world around me.

Biography:

Margaret Joba-Woodruff is an emerging artist who was born in Tiohtià:ke (Montréal), raised on the island of Noepe (Martha’s Vineyard), and who is currently living and working on the island of Ktaqmkuk (St. John’s, Newfoundland). Joba-Woodruff’s practice explores intersections of nature, the body, and printmaking, employing repetitive and labour intensive acts of intuition and nostalgia to invite connections between materials and our own bodies, memories and subjectivities.

Joba-Woodruff received her BFA in Visual Arts from the University of British Columbia in 2020 and has exhibited at the Edinburgh College of Art, Hatch Art Gallery, Taipei Art Book Fair, Dundarave Print Workshop, and in a handful of virtual spaces and alleyways. She is currently in residence as the 2022-23 Don Wright Scholar at St. Michael’s Printshop in St. John’s, Newfoundland which is awarded each year to one early career artist working in contemporary printmaking. When she is not behind the wheel of an etching press, you can find her looking for the people and places that feel like home.