Anna Lefsrud

26 June 1997 - 2 August 1997
Opening Reception 26 June 1997 8pm

Window:

The Night I Met My Farthest Brother

Mercer Union is pleased to present The Night I Met My Farthest Brother by Toronto-based artist Anna Lefsrud. Since graduating from York University with her BFA Honours Degree, Lefsrud has exhibited in a number of collective exhibition including the 1994 and 1996 Duke-U-Menta projects and in previous 23rd Room collective projects.

Unlike most windows designed for commercial display, the Mercer Union window requires the viewer on the street to look up at the art or activity presented in the space. This elevation often adds a sense of drama to the work presented. Anna Lefsrud’s installation, The Night I Met My Farthest Brother, investigates the notions of theatre and attempts to blur the concepts of observer and performer. Photographs of honey harvesters scaling cliffs in the mountains of Nepal are mounted along the bottom portion of the window, while, in the gallery, “action figures” attached to an overhead pulley system can be manipulated by visitors. An airborne money, bird of prey and lioness can approach a suspended stationary human figure. The bodies embrace when the magnets hidden within each attract: Lefsrud states:

The suspension of the human figure is indicative of a seemingly passive stance, allowing information and experience to come of it…receptive as opposed to inert.

Receptiveness is an active ingredient. It is one half in the equation of participating. That said, the monkey, the lioness and the bird of prey return to their stations and wait for the next willing human.

Reid Diamond