Bio
Elizabeth MacKenzie uses drawing to explore the productive aspects of uncertainty through repetition, interrogations of portraiture and considerations of intersubjective experience, such as maternity. By their very nature drawings represent what is provisional and transitory. The materials and processes she employs interrupt representation and create tension between the act of drawing and the illusion it creates.
She’s lived and worked in a number of Canadian cities, including Toronto, Saskatoon, Edmonton and currently resides in Vancouver, the unceded traditional territories of the Coast Salish peoples of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.
MacKenzie’s drawing installations have been shown across Canada, including exhibitions at the Mount Saint Vincent Art Gallery (Halifax), the Agnes Etherington Art Centre (Kingston), the Glenbow Museum (Calgary), the Vancouver Art Gallery and the Burnaby Art Gallery. She maintains an ongoing commitment to collaborative and community-engaged art practices, critical writing and teaching.
“Becoming an artist mother more than 30 years ago helped me redefine both what it means to be an artist and what it means to be a mother. This collection includes a TV interview about Radiant Monster, an installation about maternal ambivalence I produced and exhibited a number of times from 1996 to 1998. Up and Down She Goes (1998) and Me First (1999), are a couple of short videos I produced in relation to my experience as a mother. The video Delivery (2000) was developed in connection to First Person Plural, an artist mother symposium for Mentoring Artists for Women’s Art (MAWA) I co-organized in 2000. The last video in this group is a recording of a talk I gave at Embody/In My Body, a 2017 conference about parenting, organized by Foolish Operations, a local community dance ensemble.”
Projects
Spacemen and Invisible Women (1994)
This paper was presented as part of the panel: “Embodied Rights?: (Ms)Representations” Feminist Issues: Post-Liberal Discourse and the Ethics of (Ms)Representation Conference, York Centre for Feminist Research, April 22-23, 1994.
Radiant Monster (1996-1998)
“The installation Radiant Monster represents the ambivalent feelings I’ve experienced in response to real and imagined pregnancies and children. I wanted to express a continuum between the desire and the anxiety that the contemplation and experience of maternity evokes.”
Reviews
“Elizabeth MacKenzie: The Works, Edmonton”, by Blair Brennan, (1997).
“Radiant Monster” Installation by Elizabeth MacKenzie. “Misconceptions about maternity revised at Gallery I.I.I. exhibit.The Manitobian (1998)
“The Radiant Monster: Art Installation by Elizabeth MacKenzie” by Rachel Ariss in Herizons (Summer 1998) Page 43
“The Radiant Monster: Art Installation by Elizabeth MacKenzie” by Rachel Ariss in Herizons (Summer 1998) Page 44
First Person Plural (2000)
First Person Plural, May 26-28, 2000, Winnipeg Art Gallery
“A weekend of discussion, video screening and performance focusing on the multiple roles held by artists mothers and the impact they have upon art practise, both for individuals and for the art world at large.”
This event grew out of a similar event Mackenzie organized with New York-based artist Martha Thowsend for the Mentoring Artists for Women’s Art (MAWA) newsletter. The symposium included the video series “Looking for Trouble: Tapes by Unruly Mothers”
“The Mother is still known as an artist” Review of First Person Plural, May 26-28, 2000 by Kristen Tresor in Uptown, May 25, 2000, 9.
Exquisite Tension: The Annotated Mother (2012)
“Exquisite Tension: The Annotated Mother” an essay by Elizabeth MacKenzie included in the book, Reconciling Art and Mothering, edited by Rachel Epp Buller (Asghate Press, 2012)
“Exquisite Tension: The Annotated Mother”, Reconciling Art and Mothering, edited by Rachel Epp Buller (Asghate Press, 2012)
Essay by Susan Gingell
“Bodies of Knowledge: The Counterdiscursive Art of Elizabeth MacKenzie”. An essay by Susan Gingell. Blackflash 15.1 Spring 1997.
Website
http://www.elizabeth-mackenzie.com
Blog
http://blogs.eciad.ca/elizabethmackenzie/artist-mother/
“This blog is subtitled ‘Negotiating Doubt’ as a way to represent my ongoing struggle to overcome doubt and continue producing as an artist. It includes a number of posts discussing my role as an artist mother, an annotated narrative outlining my history as an artist mother, a page of Artist-Mother/Parent Resources and an Artist-Mother/Parent Bibliography.”