photo: Steve Payne
David R. Harper - Toronto, Canada
This, I Build For You, 2013
Performance and Installation
68 - Queens Park Crescent East & Grosvenor Street
[ photographs ] [ video ]
Performance and Installation
Part installation, part performance, this work invites the viewer to observe as a 20-foot monument
becomes adorned with pattern and ornamentation. The intricate act of the artist’s hand embroidering
throughout the night is projected on the blank face of the monument's base. This durational performance
is inspired by the myriad ways that we commemorate as a society. By juxtaposing the intimate act of embroidery
with the cold surface of the monument, this work discusses the dichotomy of public memory and private
meditation. Eventually filling the monument with decoration and layered meanings, the viewer is asked
to contemplate our public monuments and consider the ways in which we encounter them as individuals.
The result is a haunting experience wherein feelings of loss and gain are literally being worked through.
This project invites viewers to think about their relationships to our public monuments and our own feelings
of remembrance and celebration.
David R. Harper was born in Toronto and currently resides in Chicago, Illinois. He received a BFA
in 2006 from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and an MFA in Fiber and Material Studies from
the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2011. He has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions
in the United States and Canada including Oh, Canada at MASS MoCA, and Builders at the National Gallery
of Canada and is represented by MKG 127 (Toronto, ON)
www.davidrharper.com/
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