Thurs Feb 20 2025 - Sat Mar 22 2025
Motions
Artist
Cathy Sisler
Gallery
Cathy Sisler’s iconoclastic body of work is renowned for exploring themes of physicality, identity, and the human experience. Through her performances and videos, she pushed the boundaries of traditional media, creating dynamic pieces that critically examine identity politics and the societal constructs of self-representation. Sisler’s work invites viewers to question perceptions of the body, movement, and individuality while grappling with societal pressures and norms. Her enduring themes of fragility, marginalization, and resilience reflect her unique artistic vision and continue to resonate.
Sisler’s significant contributions to the Canadian art scene include collaborations with Groupe Intervention Vidéo (GIV), which brought her work to French-speaking audiences, as well as the inclusion of her video The Better Me (1995) in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Canada. A fierce advocate for marginalized voices, she also made a profound impact on the Niagara community, using art as a means of connection and empowerment. Sisler is remembered not only for her artistic legacy but also for her lasting influence on the local creative landscape.
The Program
Aberrant Motion #1
Quebec, 1993 | 10m 42s | English
An introduction to the Spinning Woman: “the spinning is an insistence of self amongst others without conformity.” Spinning in urban traffic on busy city streets is seen in relation to concepts of community where “private ideas should not come out.” Spinning, an aberrant, potentially turbulent form of motion, is used as a metaphor which allows the unsocialized self to cohere while maintaining a visible, physical, social presence.
Aberrant Motion #2 (The Spinning Woman Disguised as a Stability Delusion)
Quebec, 1993 | 10m 23s | English
The Spinning Woman embarks on a journey through the business district in her construction of an urban body: a large box in which she walks and spins. Despite her efforts to “fit in” with the flow and economy of the city, she finds she cannot because she has “a constant compulsion to spin.”
Aberrant Motion #3
Quebec, 1993 | 9m 36s | English
The Spinning Woman studies order and motion. She carries a cardboard box containing a number of rubber balls. She releases them into crowds in the train station, but they fail to disrupt the order. In the end, she realizes that her theories about motion and order will always be lost in the redundant information of her public perception, and consequent dismissal, as a “crazy woman”.
Aberrant Motion #4 (Face Story, Stagger Stories)
Quebec, 1993 | 14m 31s | English (French version available)
The Spinning Woman reveals her many social labels: alcoholic, white, female, lesbian, fat – in this critical look at identity politics. Staggering – a more complex form of motion in comparison to linear walking – is a metaphor used to discuss the kind of self-erosion that seems to be a requirement of social survival.