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Canadian artist Fiona Dunnett
Images of self and death in
Oaxaca are muted with comic style and collage
Comic strips, a young Canadian's self portraits, and photographs
of violent deaths in a Mexican daily newspaper, make strange bedfellows.
But they constitute a major part of the driving force for the
creative energies of artist Fiona Dunnett, a resident of Oaxaca,
Mexico.
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Ottawa-born
Dunnett has been living in Oaxaca since 2005. As in the
case of so many artists who now reside in this city in southern
Mexico, her arrival has been rather circuitous. And like
so many others, her artistic talent has been influenced
at virtually every stop along the way. At age five she left
Canada for Bangladesh with her Canadian diplomat mother
and the rest of her family. After three years it was back
to Ottawa, and then a further three years in Zimbabwe.
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"When I left Zimbabwe I felt close to South Africa. I took
a course in stone sculpture while there, so yes, I suppose living
in Zimbabwe has had somewhat of an influence on what I do today,"
she surmises. But it was her upper level academic training, first
at the Canterbury School of Arts, followed by British Columbia's
University of Victoria from which she graduated with an Hons.
B.A. in Fine Arts, which exposed her to the personages who have
impacted her creativity the most.
"I've had a strong interest in the work of Gustav Klimt
[1862 - 1918]," Dunnett reveals. The Austrian symbolist painter
was one of the most prominent members of the Vienna Art Nouveau
movement, yet a controversial figure in his time, criticized for
his works being too sensual and erotic. She continues: "But
it's Lichtenstein whose art I've actually made more of a conscious
effort to respect and carry forward, imprinting it with a bit
of my own personality and life experiences."
Roy Fox Lichtenstein [1923 - 1997] was a prominent American pop
artist, whose work was heavily influenced by both popular advertising
and the comic book style. The latter clearly shines through in
Dunnett's more recent works, and in an earlier piece which graces
a wall in her home in Oaxaca's Xochimilco neighborhood which she
shares with her boyfriend and three others: "That one's based
on a dream I had, certainly with overt comic book imagery; in
the particular dream there was a calenda (parade), with bodies
being dragged through the streets. I once did a series based on
my dreams. I dyed the red sky forming part of the background of
this canvas with cochineal [the minute insect with naturally produces
carminic acid, and was an important export industry for Oaxaca
during colonial times]."
Dunnett is much too modest. Since moving to Oaxaca there's no
doubt that she's put her own mark on the comic style, with her
un-daunting desire to learn, and innovate. The geographical, cultural
and political environment in which she lives provides her with
diverse opportunities for artistic inspiration. She attended a
workshop to learn about the use of natural dyes such as those
derived from flowers, plants and of course cochineal, at the educational
and research facility known as Centro de Difusión de la
Grana Cochinilla Tlapanochestli. "For quite some time I'd
been thinking about using natural dyes in my work, but it wasn't
until a couple of years ago that I realized that here in Oaxaca
[actually a few kilometers out of the city, in Santa María
Coyotepec] I had the opportunity to learn about their use from
an expert, Manuel Loera Fernández, the chemist at Tlapanochestli.
There's just so much artistic stimulation in Oaxaca that it's
hard to resist taking advantage of everything available."
Dunnett has also participated in more traditional hands-on seminars,
at the well-known Graphic Arts Institute of Oaxaca (IAGO) and
at a couple of other institutes in the city. Towards the other
end of the spectrum, she credits two local graffiti stencil art
groups with providing her with additional inspiration, which becomes
apparent after an examination of her work.
"I began moving out of realism and into stylized, surreal
works towards the end of my Canadian academic training. It was
about the same time that I began working with mixed media, my
strong preference at this stage of my development." Coming
to Oaxaca was perhaps the catalyst she required in order to begin
more experimental work, within the context of an extremely encouraging
environment.
Aside from a leaning towards the use of natural colors for backgrounds
on her canvasses, one of the major identifying features of Dunnett's
work is her use of collage --- cut-outs from newspapers, magazines
and comic books. Another is using photographs of her own head
and face to provide the stimulus for her portrayal of expressions
and poses she seeks to capture for each subject. Almost every
head in every work is based on a self-photographic portrait:
"I started doing self-portraits when I began doing photography
several years ago. Then when I moved into painting, I had this
corpus of self-photos, so I was able to draw from them for my
art. Although I wanted to shoot other people, I never felt at
ease doing so. And though my boyfriend and I have been together
for close to four years, I still don't feel comfortable photographing
even him. So it's all me, perhaps because of being shy when it
comes to shooting others. But that red one over there, textured
with corn husks from tamales, it's an experiment, using a face
that's not my own --- I think it's best if I stick to my own face."
Each face evokes different emotions, and images of self. "The
faces make eye contact; viewers' eyes move around each work and
then return to the eyes and face," she explains. It's undeniable
that Dunnett's own pleasing facial features, and her comport,
once transferred to canvas, play a significant role in directing
the viewer. She has masterfully photographed her head and upper
body at every angle and with a plethora of facial expressions
for use in her work.
But there's another reason we return to the images of Dunnett's
facial expressions: The torso and limbs of each primary subject
portrayed is far too troubling --- each is a digitalized version
of a photograph of a person who has died a violent death, usually
in a traffic collision or as a consequence of domestic conflict,
captured by Dunnett from both print and online versions of a Oaxacan
daily, Noticias Voz e Imagen de Oaxaca. But in the artist herself,
there is a sense of calm.
"I started using those photographs because they just began
to jump out at me. You never see anything like it in Canada. In
Oaxaca, it's on the street corners and in the newsstands. Death
here seems to be an everyday thing, and attitudes towards death
are so different than from where you and I come from, not so hidden
away."
Dunnett stresses that her intention is not to invoke feelings
of horror, nor reveal the gruesome. The facial expressions she
initially captures with a lens, then transposes onto canvas with
brush, lead us away. In the case of her work with a collaged iguana,
it's curiosity in her face, rather than demonic imagery of death,
which draws one in.
The juxtaposition of death against the aesthetics of comic imagery
is striking, almost as much as the multiplicity of presentations
of Dunnett's own self. It's that combination which maintains the
viewer's awe of and transfixation upon her work. Perhaps Fiona
Dunnett never should break out of her reticence about photographing
the faces of others.
About the Author
Alvin Starkman has a Masters in Social Anthropology from Toronto's
York University, and a law degree from Osgoode Hall Law School.
Alvin ceased practicing law in 2004, when he and his wife Arlene
began living permanently in Oaxaca. Since that time, Alvin has
written over 90 articles about life and cultural traditions in
and around Oaxaca and its central valleys, for newspapers, magazines,
and websites promoting tourism in Mexico and abroad. Alvin and
Arlene operate Casa Machaya Oaxaca Bed & Breakfast (http://www.oaxacadream.com).
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