katie marie bruce, Page from sixty six days. Cyanotype on kozo paper, hand-bound artist book, 2024. Courtesy of the artist.
katie marie bruce | tandem inadequacies
LIBRARY GALLERY
25 JANUARY 2025 - 12 APRIL 2025
There is no single language for grief. Any attempt to describe it, linguistically or visually, requires translation, a translation that often falls short. tandem inadequacies draws upon personal losses experienced by the artist and inadequate expressions of the resulting grief. Trained as a printmaker, Lethbridge-based artist katie marie bruce uses the intimacy of the written word and the form of the book in relating the gaps between grief and its rationalization.
Within the exhibition, bruce touches on internal impressions of grief and the cliché words used to make sense of those emotions. Glass sculptures of tissue boxes offer prints of not-so-consoling platitudes for visitors to take with them or leave behind. Like the other books in the shelves of the Gallery’s library, bruce’s three hand-made books are also able to be handled by viewers. Their delicate nature asks visitors to take a careful approach in handling the books, mirroring the care required when approaching grief.
Each hand-made book is created with cyanotypes and forms that encourage readers to consider how one holds grief: a Turkish map fold book that spills open; a Chinese coin purse book that requires reader intervention to understand; and a sewn book of over 50 floral cyanotypes tucked like correspondence into envelopes. The pale silhouettes of each cyanotype flower become a portal in blueprint form, an index that denotes each flower’s short presence before wilting, an imprint of the resulting absence. Here, bruce tries to find language where language does not adequately address loss; a cipher of her own making arranged in a rising and falling chronology.
Curated by Adam Whitford, Associate Curator & Exhibitions Manager
katie marie bruce (she/her) is an artist and printmaker, living and making work on Treaty 7 Territory in Sikóóhkotok, also known as Lethbridge, Alberta. She received an MFA from York University in 2015, where her thesis work was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. While her practice is rooted in print media—actively invested in considering multiplicity as both motivation and manner of interrogation—the work is expansive and interdisciplinary in its articulations. Her practice has been supported by the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and presented in solo, two-person, and group exhibitions nationally and internationally. katie is currently an instructor at the University of Lethbridge in the Faculty of Fine Arts, Art Department.
We acknowledge the support of the City of Lethbridge, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Alberta Foundation for the Arts.
