A photograph hints at a crouching body in the grass, its arms extended as though waiting for someone out of frame to arrive—a mother turning to face her child. Her body, except for her arms, is covered in images of plants, also turning towards something: the light. Drawing from her own experience as a mother and artist, Dominique Rey’s work explores forms of relational attachment, dependence, and tension that can emerge between the almost inseparable bodies of a mother and child. With embraces and contortions, play of figure and ground, and a constant search for balance, beings are interconnected by the myriad of complex feelings that characterize motherhood.

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By way of collage and performative actions, Rey cuts out and reclaims her body’s outline in order to inhabit the space that belongs to her. By taking apart and reinterpreting her own image, she calls into question the universal figures of mother and child that are present throughout art history, and manages to create her own open-ended and contemporary narrative. In examining the negative space between bodies, which includes their mental and physical limits, the exhibition looks not only at the individuals, but more importantly at the movements and fluctuations that exist in the context of their relations.

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Dominique Rey would like to thank the Canada Council for the Arts, the Manitoba Arts Council and the University of Manitoba for their support. A special thanks to Madeleine Coar, Auguste Coar, Lancelot Coar, Sarah Ciurysek, Esen Ciurysek, Laina Brown, Benita Kliewer, Kellen Deighton, Isaac Keeper-Muswaggon, Jon Watts, Jason Hare, Robert Taite and the Light Visions team.

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