eve chartrand

Lives and works in Bainbridge Island, WA, USA

Artist statement

My current practice is the result of many years of extensive, ongoing research-creation where visual propositions explore the implications to self-identity and agency of current negative body definitions in people’s lives, particularly ageing women bodies, through the implementation of creative case studies. The work investigates how artistic transformative encounters, wherein underlying, unifying motifs evoke horror and frailty, also speak to common humaneness, regeneration, solidarities, and shared vulnerabilities. Challenging discriminating stereotypes negating the fertile ground of ageing, its rich individuality, and the uniqueness of its personal landscape, my research-creation process celebrates the unique role of embodied transformation in the maintenance of one’s personal ecology and the encompassing generosity and ingenious, regenerative creativity of nature. Yet, throughout installations and assemblages, I wish to draw attention to how life reveals itself in unexpected ways if we dare to look beyond what is superficially exposed and expected, thus challenging ideas that ageing is intrinsically defined by ontological decay and death. While researching narratives of inclusiveness and visibility outside normalized constructs of women’s bodies, the creative process thus generates embodied things where materiality has agency and divergent bodies are revealed and celebrated for their uniqueness and generative attributes. The work is strongly inspired by the idea that...

Artwork