In institutional and popular culture the scientist imaginaries are equated with “man” and “erratic solitary genius” so much so, that in modern research such misconceptions still prevail. Centering human fragility and intimacy, this body of work focuses on the personal relationship struggles and motherhood guilt a scientist, social scientist, researcher, scholar, or artist is faced with in everyday life on the way to theorizing, discovering, or inventing something new. It reveals the spilling of one’s ongoing intense research processes beyond the lab or studio while, marking an understanding of the loved one’s implications in the work, the simultaneous roles such prominent figure co-inhabits, and the ever-present unconditional love as the most important discovery.
“I would like to thank Lisa Steele and Dr. John Baldacchino for the lovely essays, the Da Vinci School children for the opening night performance, and the Ontario Arts Council, and Ana Barajas, YYZ Artists’ Outlet for making the exhibition possible.” – H.M.
Artist Bio
Henrjeta Mece
Henrjeta Mece is a cross-disciplinary artist, curator, and scholar. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Justice Education at University of Toronto. Mece holds a PhD (UofT) and has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards. She is the founder of TriangleD Contemporary—a space for art, culture, and critical dialogue coming in Toronto. Mece’s artwork draws on a variety of artistic practices such as, drawing, painting, and performance questioning the discourses of history and geography as languages in crisis and their play on production of identity and belonging. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at venues including, Palazzo Loredan, Venice (IT), Zweigstelle Berlin, Berlin (DE), MOCCA, Toronto (CA), and ISCP, New York (USA). Mece represented Central-Eastern Canada amongst 200 artists at the Great and North exhibition in Venice, and her work is part of Luciano Benetton’s world-wide Imago Mundi Collection.