Christine D’Onofrio | Wilson S. Wilson

Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art, Kelowna B.C

Christine D’Onofrio, Cat, 2023. Image courtesy of the artist.

The Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art presents work by artists Christine D’Onofrio and Wilson S. Wilson, on view from September 8 through October 21, 2023.

Through her work, Christine D’Onofrio negotiates the tensions and promises of power found in acts of humour, virtue, narcissism, humiliation, desire, technology and community. The moments she exploits point to intuitive effects and ideologies, sometimes seen as ‘accidents’ to reveal characteristics of mediation that tie personal and political agency.

In cat cat cat, D’Onofrio’s work critiques agency as it ‘belongs to’ representational systems, in this case, a white female spinster, crazy “cat lady”, pseudo-feminist icon. Her inquiry into the function of social and cultural oppressions to ensure perpetuating power structures perform themselves is to discover new portrayals of the ageing white female embodiment and privilege. Because co-opted depictions of rebellion make revolutionary actions defunct of their power, she questions our place in an intersectional self-aware social, cultural, and political theory and deliberately engages both the triumphs and perils of feminist art practice, history, and visual culture.

Wilson S. Wilson, Us, Couch, 2023. Image courtesy of the artist.

D’Onofrio’s work broadly examines the way society views and imposes stereotypes onto women in a certain demographic. Whereas Wilson S. Wilson’s work in The Pandrogyny Project explores one’s presentation within society. How one can change and shift how they are perceived.

Becoming a medium—a setting, a subject, an object has enfranchised artist Wilson S. Wilson from the discomfort and alienation of gender, sex and script. The Pandrogyny Project offers a personal realisation of pandrogyny as Wilson takes in the materials of objects and furniture around them, and begins to not only become these items, but to replace them, forming a third entity which is neither furniture nor individual, but a pandrogyne of domestic subjects. This concept of pandrogyny has evolved from the work of Genesis and Lady Jaye Breyer P-Orridge and their decades long Pandrogeny Project in which two people make surgical changes to their body, appearances and identities, becoming one unique, shared self.

Romantic and uncanny, The Pandrogeny Project is a body of work that explores the shifting of identity occurring as one comes to resemble and even function as an object of their space—as a pandrogyne of object/self—in distinguishing the object-subject and the human-object. In the exhibition, the pandrogyne materialises as a collection of furniture chimaera pieces and performance documents: an artist’s publication that takes the form of a magazine spread, and a non-linear film where intimate gestures are captured in a series of surreal, pseudo-erotic scenes.

Both cat cat cat and The Pandrogeny Project will be on view from September 8 – October 21, 2023.

About the Artists

Christine D’Onofrio (she/her/they) is a Vancouver based artist. She has exhibited work across Canada including; Eyelevel, Modern Fuel, deluge, Gallery 44, Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, and La Centrale. Active in her local art community, she has served on the Board of Directors for the Access Gallery, and set up over a hundred engaged learning placements for students. She obtained a BFA from York University, followed by an MFA at the University of British Columbia where she currently teaches.

Wilson S. Wilson (they/them) is an emerging artist based out of Surrey B.C. Wilson documents and produces multimedia works confronting their objectified body and reconsidering their own conflict with gender performance. As someone outside of the gender binary their art explores content, mediums, and themes that not only evade societal traditions but oppose them. They have participated in several exhibitions, including shows at the James Black Gallery and SFU Audain Gallery.

About the Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art

The Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art is a non-profit organization dedicated to the development of our creative community.

Since 1989, the Alternator has shown the work of emerging Canadian artists and helped develop the talents of local artists by providing a network of collaboration and sharing. The Alternator fosters energetic, creative, critical discussion on art & culture. The Alternator believes in the greater positive potential of our creative community and values our role as a key contributor to the cultural life of Kelowna and beyond.

The Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art respectfully acknowledges its presence on the unceded territory of the syilx (Okanagan) people.

Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art
#103 – 421 Cawston Ave, Kelowna B.C.
www.alternatorcentre.com
info@alternatorcentre.com
(250) 868–2298

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Accessibility:
The Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art is situated within the Rotary Centre for the Arts, which is fully accessible.