At Home
Talks with Canadian Artists about Place and Practice
- Publisher
- Goose Lane Editions
- Initial publish date
- Aug 2018
- Category
- Criticism & Theory, Canadian, Essays
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9781773100470
- Publish Date
- Aug 2018
- List Price
- $29.95
-
eBook
- ISBN
- 9781773100494
- Publish Date
- May 2019
- List Price
- $19.95
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Description
In this intimate investigation of the artistic process, Lezli Rubin-Kunda explores the nuanced path of creative work and the way artists make sense of home and place within their art practice and their lives. Rubin-Kunda is a multidisciplinary artist who examines these issues in her own work. But in this book, she expands her horizons, travelling across Canada to talk to more than fifty practicing artists, including Amalie Atkins, Aganetha Dyck, Francois Morelli, Simon Frank, and Sharon Alward, about their work, their creative process, and the place of "home": in their work.
What emerges from these thoughtful conversations are fascinating and unexpected orientations to place, ranging from deep connections to a specific childhood home, to more conscious adoptions of place, to somewhat fluid approaches in which the very concept of "home" seems to dissolve.
Moving from physical landscapes to the geography of memories and recorded histories, from territories of emotion to social environments that condition and contribute to the idea of home, Rubin-Kunda touches on indigenous approaches to ancestral homelands, the land as physical place and emotional territory, the historic role of women in creating and taking care of "home," ideas of home disconnected from place, and liberating concepts of "homelessness." Woven through these encounters with other artists are Rubin-Kunda’s reflections on her own artistic path.
Candid, empathetic, and insightful, At Home explores the creative process and the ways that artists find and create meaning within a fragmented contemporary landscape.
About the author
Lezli Rubin-Kunda is a Canadian-Israeli multidisciplinary artist whose work explores her relationship with her environment. She has exhibited and performed in the United States, Canada, Israel, and Europe. She currently lives outside of Tel Aviv and teaches in the architecture faculty at the Technion University, Haifa, Israel.
Editorial Reviews
"At Home is a valuable work of curating and reflecting on a thoughtful, intergenerational selection of artists, and a reminder of the value of the artist-curator and the exploratory nature of the curatorial process."
<i>RACAR</i>
"The related tensions of post-colonialism in Canada and Rubin-Kunda’s ambivalence towards narratives of home and belonging in the face of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict permeate this book, and the author does not shy away from the apparent paradox of seeking home in contested territories."
<i>Atlantic Books Today</i>