VENUE
- Art Gallery of Swift Current
- 411 Herbert Street East
- Swift Current, SK
- S9H 1M5
Gabriela García-Luna: Flor y Canto (Flower and Song)
April 12 – June 7, 2024
Reception: January 19, 2024, 7-10 pm
During the reception, the artist will activate his sculpture C.R.E.A.M. to produce piping hot aebleskiver (a traditional Danish dessert) and fresh coffee for the audience.
There is the surface. Now think – or rather feel, intuit – what is beyond it, what the reality must be like if it looks this way. Photographs, which cannot themselves explain anything, are inexhaustible invitations to deduction, speculation, fantasy. – Susan Sontag
In this body of work, Gabriela García-Luna probes the fleeting and the elusive. Using a blend of digital collage, drawing, mark making, and sculpture, the artist layers photographic images of plants from places she has called home; Saskatchewan and Mexico. The works are not concerned with representing what we consider “reality” but rather with highlighting the intangible, impermanent, and fragile parts of human experience – arguably, the places where existence becomes meaningful.
In speaking of her work, García-Luna offers the notion, “No man ever steps in the same river twice.” Greek philosopher Heraclitus coined that phrase to articulate his theory that nothing is permanent except change. Following that thought, this work welcomes us to look beneath the surface of life’s river and recognize both the seen and the unseeable as we embrace what cannot be held. Though it may seem at odds, the moments that shape our memories – the constant of change – is integral to finding our home places.
Gabriela García-Luna is a photo-based multimedia artist born in Mexico City and living in Treaty Six Territory/ Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Her artistic practice started with photography and expands into digital work, printmaking, drawing, video and installation. In her work, she explores qualities of Nature combined with indexes of her personal history; investigating ideas of unity, separation, fragility, resilience, presence and absence and the points of contact of different realities simultaneously.
García-Luna has exhibited in multiple solo and group exhibitions in Mexico, Canada, UK and India, and she has received grants and awards from major art organizations such as FONCA (National Foundation for Culture and Art Fellowship in Mexico, The Saskatchewan Arts Board and Canada Council of the Arts among others. Her work is part of public and private national and international collections Including the Galería Libertad and Coleccion Omnilife, Mexico, TD Bank, Saskatchewan Arts Board, MacKenzie Art Gallery and Global Affairs Canada.
She has been involved in teaching, mentoring and leading community projects in Mexico, Canada, and India. She holds an MFA in Studio Arts from the University of Saskatchewan and a BDes from the Autonomous Metropolitan University (UAM) in Mexico City. Her work is represented by Slate Fine Art Gallery in Regina, Saskatchewan.