Musagetes and CAFKA are pleased to announce that Suzy Lake will be speaking as part of the Big Ideas in Art and Culture Lecture Series. This lecture will take place at the Art Gallery of Guelph on Thursday, January 19, at 7 PM. The location is wheelchair accessible and admission is free.
Suzy Lake began her art practice in 1968. Following the social and political unrest of the 1960s she emigrated from Detroit to Montreal, and then to Toronto in 1978. Active within her communities, she was a co-founder of Vehicule Art Inc. (Montreal, 1972) and the Toronto Photographers Workshop (Toronto, 1978). Concurrent to her practice, Lake taught for 40 years in Montreal, Toronto, and received Professor Emerita status from the University of Guelph in 2008.
Lake was among the first female artists in Canada to adopt performance, video, and photography to explore the politics of gender, the body, and identity. Lake continues to address the relationship of the individual to societal forces to break to reveal constructions or restraints that are built into our culture.
Suzy has participated in significant conceptual or feminist exhibitions such as: WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution (LA MOCA and tour, 2007-08), Identity Theft: Eleanor Antin, Lynn Hershman, Suzy Lake, 1972-1978 (Santa Monica Museum of Art, 2007), WOMAN: The feminist Avant-Garde from the 1970’s (Sammlung Verbund collection European tour, 2013-18) and Traffic: Conceptual Art in Canada 1965-80 (2010). In 2014 the Art Gallery of Ontario presented a full-career retrospective titled Introducing Suzy Lake.
In 2016, Lake received the Governor General’s award in Visual and Media Arts and the Scotiabank Photography Award. She currently lives and makes work in Toronto.
Suzy Lake's Big Ideas lecture is part of the first Arts Everywhere festival, running from January 19-21, 2017 in Guelph, Ontario. Over three days, the festival offers lectures, conversations, music, artistic performances, literary readings, and walks in the city. Several of the events will be live-streamed on the Arts Everywhere home page. For more information about Arts Everywhere please check out the website ArtsEverywhere.ca.
Image: Suzy Lake, Red Enhancement, 2005.