Morph
Twyla Exner
September 3 – October 30
Artist Statement
Morph brings together existing works and new works to inspire a creative dialogue around technology, waste, material, form, and process. Works are woven, crocheted and embroidered using post-consumer telephone wire, copper wire, electrical and electronic components.
I am inspired by the curiosities of nature, compelled by the reciprocal systems of electronic refuse and captivated by the idea of technologies gone awry. I am interested in exploring the emotional and material impact of technology on individual consciousness and experience and the various ways in which it infiltrates or permeates and (re)configures tangible space.
We are all aware of the steady transposition of once precious, now abandoned technology, unemotionally replaced with advanced, more attractive multi-tasking tools as an inherent process of capitalism. This e-waste exists as evidence of the need for actual resources as a prerequisite for digitized environments.
Ironically, this same metaphysical space prides itself as a release from materiality. But the bits and bytes of the digital landscape still require atoms and molecules, and remain based on a physical system of wires and electrical infrastructure. As they are expelled, they become deemed only as problematic waste: the materials that comprise them built to last while unyielding impulse dooms the object to failure. As we approach humanity’s current trend of incorporating biometric devices in everyday life, what becomes of ‘livingelectronics’ as they enter this cycle of obsolescence?
The works in this exhibition propose hybrids of technological structures and living organisms. They take form as abandoned technologies that have sprouted with new life, clever artificialities that imitate nature, or biotechnological fixtures of the not-so-distant future.
Artist Biography
Twyla Exner is a Canadian artist inspired by the wonders of nature and the idea of electronic technologies gone awry. She uses the materials and imagery of discarded electronic technologies to create whimsical and worrisome sculptures and drawings that propose hybrids of technological structures and living organisms.
From Treaty 4 Territory of the Saskatchewan prairies, Twyla now lives and plays in the forest of Northern British Columbia on the traditional, unceeded territory of the Lheidli T’enneh with her cat Tater and partner Griffith Aaron Baker.
Twyla is passionate about sharing in the creative process and has designed exhibitions and facilitated lectures, workshops, lesson plans and interactive art making experiences for schools, community centers, post-secondary institutions, galleries and festivals across Canada.