S. Maria Brandt: Installation 50%

A meditation on the Perishable / Photography and Epoxy Resin Objects

Untitled 03, 2022, Digital Print, 40 x 40

S. Maria Brandt
Installation 50% – A meditation on the Perishable / Photography and Epoxy Resin Objects

April 1 – April 20, 2023
Opening Reception: Sunday, April 2, 1-4 p.m.
Cedar Ridge Gallery, Toronto

Cedar Ridge Gallery presents: Installation 50% – A meditation on the Perishable / Photography and Epoxy Resin Objects, a solo exhibition by new Canadian artist S. Maria Brandt.

Please join us for the opening reception on Sunday, April 2, at 1 p.m. The artist will be in attendance. Light refreshments. Parking and admission are free. All are welcome.

In Installation 50% – A Meditation on the Perishable, Ottawa artist S. Maria Brandt presents an exhibition of large-scale photographs and epoxy resin objects. She aims to raise consciousness around food waste and its role in our home.

Once upon a time Cedar Ridge was a domestic space, food is part of the history of this building now as an artistic gathering place it is offering an opportunity to the audience to take a step back and engage with the act of food and the economics of “eating.”

Cheese Plate, 2022, Epoxy Resin, 10 x 10 x 1

Artist Statement

More than 50% of the food that Canadian households throw out could have been eaten. Instead, we leave those millions of tonnes of edible food worth billions of dollars to perish, unseen and forgotten in the back of our fridges, freezers, and pantries, turning our own and the world’s resources to waste.

That 50% at the back of my own household’s fridge is both the object and the subject of this work.

As a society, we conceal our garbage, our excrement, our decaying bodies, and our dying loved ones, and we shroud them in silence: our conversations about them are muted, often followed by apology for raising them. I came to realize that we and I cannot continue to avoid our responsibilities for the world and our own homes and lives. Nothing good grows out of sight and mind in our fridges’ not-crispers-but-rotters. I was compelled to expose these hidden things by creating objects that I could see and touch.

Secure access to nutritious, affordable, and abundant food is vital—and is contingent on food’s storage and preservation. Archaeological discoveries at sites dated as far back as 6000 BC show that housing design even then was centred on the preparation, storage, and consumption of food. And this continues to be true.

Supply interruptions, shortages, and affordability of food, however they come about, are threats to survival. World history is full of tragic examples, and even now, in 2022, the World Food Programme reports Nigeria, Ethiopia, South Sudan and Yemen to be facing famine, with many other countries highly at risk of it.

Food is sown, grown, processed, stored, sold, and transported many times over before it reaches our plates, using not only financial resources but vast natural resources as well, disrupting ecosystems, and producing greenhouse gases, all with effects on the climate. And yet 58% of the food produced in Canada will be lost or wasted every year.

Cauliflower, 2022, Digital Print, 20 x 20

Artist Biography

S. Maria Brandt is a German-raised Croatian and new Canadian multidisciplinary artist working primarily lens-based in Ottawa, Canada. She uses alternative processes, digital photography, post-production, and sculpture.

Whether she visually processes food, people, random objects, or architecture, her works meditate on the perishable and the fears of aging and dying. She gains inspiration from her complex history, the driving force behind the connections she establishes to present events: waste, climate change, economic disruption, poverty, hunger, migration, and survival.

She is engaging with contemporary art trends to elevate and understand everyday objects and present the politicization and radicalization of the everyday. Thus, she emphasizes the increasingly fractured world and the deep fault lines running through the human collective represented in the place a home symbolizes both in her chosen home Canada and the world at large.

She studied photography at the School of The Photographic Arts: in Ottawa. Her work is held in public and private collections in Canada, the Caribbean, and Europe.

S. Maria Brandt gratefully acknowledges funding support from the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario.

Cedar Ridge Gallery
225 Confederation Drive
Toronto, Ontario
M1G 1B2

Gallery Hours:
Monday – Wednesday, 10 a.m. – 8 p.m.
Thursday – Sunday, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.

Free admission and free parking
The Gallery is Partially Accessible (ramp access to gallery, narrowest entry is 29″ wide.)

Contact:
Andrea Cnudde, (she/her)
Cultural Outreach Officer, 416-396-7043
Andrea.Cnudde@toronto.ca

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