PORTRAITS + INSTALLATION 2010-14
Original Artworks by Danielle Folkerts – Select artworks.
As I worked through my degree at the Alberta College of Arts + Design, I spent much of my time focusing on history, narrative, and portraiture. From art history to world history and personal history, I collected fragments of stories, objects and imagery. Old books, patterns, photographs and letters are just some of the integrated materials in each painting. Below is a selected assortment of mixed media original paintings and installations.
“The Restoration of Absence + Debris”
An Installation By: Danielle Folkerts
2013 in the Illingworth Kerr Gallery, ACAD
“The Restoration of Absence + Debris” negotiates the blurred and ambivalent space between memory, history and loss, while distancing historical facts. The object and concept of the vintage photograph is on center stage, particularly the snap shot: an image with a trusting authenticity due to its lack of fabricated intent. These fragments of fading time are visual recordings of preserved everyday life, which share narratives of human development, settlement, relationships and experiences. However every accumulated document of history is also a document of what is excluded and forgotten. We record to forget, and as the dust and layers of time and change collect, not all is ever remembered. History is laced with the presence of narratives and misremembering, yet in its shadow lingers absences, slippages and unknown terrain. Once keepsakes, these images were personally collected and found in discarded and hidden albums, frames and boxes, they have become lost fragments of time; their faces are unknown and, yet their experiences familiar. They have become scattered debris, overwhelmed with loss and questions for curious memory keepers and story tellers.
-2013