Preview
BURNING SAPPHO’S BOOKS
Alexandra Haeseker
Runs until November 13
Nickle Arts Museum (U of C)
Alexandra Haeseker is home. It’s not so much that she ever really left, at least not on a permanent basis, but the artist who became a Canadian citizen in 1979 is arguably better known as a painter and printmaker within the international visual-arts community than in Calgary.
Until the recent opening of her collection of prints, now being exhibited at the Nickle Arts Museum, it had been more than a decade since Haeseker had shown her work here.
"It’s important for me to have the pieces be seen in Calgary," she says. "It’s a great place to live."
Born on April 2, 1945 in Breda, Holland, which had just been liberated by Canadian forces during the final days of the Second World War, Haeseker was destined to become a citizen of the world.
"Because my father was a petroleum engineer, my family moved a lot internationally when I was a child," she says. "From Holland to Indonesia, to New York and Texas, and finally to Canada – always stopping in Holland between postings."
In the 1950s, the family arrived in Canada and it was Calgary where Haeseker chose to pursue her arts education. She studied first at the University of Calgary, where she obtained a bachelor’s degree in art, then at Alberta College of Art (ACA), where she graduated with a fine-arts diploma after studying under legendary painter Illingworth (Buck) Kerr. In 1972, Haeseker returned to the U of C to complete a master’s degree in art before accepting a teaching position at ACA (now Alberta College of Art and Design) in 1973.
Last year, Haeseker retired from ACAD, where she had been an instructor, head of printmaking and a member of the team that in 1985 negotiated the art college’s autonomy from the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology. This year, ACAD awarded her the title of lecturer emeritus, placing her among a distinguished group of 14 who have also been given the honour since 1987.
Even though Haeseker has spent most of her adult life in and around Calgary, where she lives with her husband and fellow artist Derek Besant, she has continued to travel, spending at least part of each year living in central Mexico. She has also maintained a busy exhibition schedule, showing her colourful paintings and prints in such diverse locations as the Bronx Museum in New York City and the Sunkok Museum of Contemporary Art in Seoul, Korea.
Now, for her first Calgary exhibition in 12 years, Haeseker reaches back in history and childhood memory to present a collection of digital prints in a show entitled Burning Sappho’s Books.
The works she has created encompass both past and present, metaphor and minute detail. They are concrete manifestations of her memories of growing up in Indonesia (then called the Dutch East Indies) – where she spent countless hours studying insects and drawing – combined with the influences of Japanese design, the vibrant colours of Mexico and an homage to an idea represented by the ancient Greek poet Sappho.
Sappho, who penned volumes of writing dedicated to the virtues of women, has been called everything from the "world’s most famous lesbian" to a "threat to Christianity." Her nine volumes of writing were apparently destroyed by fire in the third century B.C. when the great library in Alexandria, Egypt was burned down. That legendary incident formed the inspiration for Haeseker’s works created over the past four years.
"The idea of burning books is evocative," she says, "the idea of lost knowledge."
Using her vast experience as a painter and printmaker, Haeseker assembles source material, including photos of plastic bugs and snakes, on her computer screen, together with images of burnt books to create colourfully charged tableaux that are outputted as limited-edition prints on archival paper.
This coupling of images of fiery destruction caused by human hands together with representative elements of nature results in prints that are visually stimulating in a primordial way. They appear to be like distant memories that have been captured and framed.
As Haeseker puts it: "Maybe you have to look back to look forward." |
Copyright ©2004 FFWD. All rights reserved.