MY LEFT-HAND IS TALKING AND MY RIGHT-HAND IS NURTURING
MY LEFT-HAND IS TALKING AND MY RIGHT-HAND IS NURTURING
The collection of poetry and drawings in My left-hand is talking and my right-hand is nurturing, explores the experience of moving past survival mode to let go of false perceptions of self, building the capacity to reclaim a truer sense of identity. It is about the experience of living with inexplicable illness and pain, loss of memory, abuse, love, and loss. It celebrates the beauty of imagination’s power to heal the body, rejuvenate our sense of self, and teach better ways of living.
Everything Jessica Field makes is biased to her lived experience. She creates AI drawings to explore new configurations on what drawing about pure emotion can be about in relation to the greater concept of the human condition. The artist’s drawings act as material that is reinterpreted by an “other”, to compose hundreds of variations as a way of seeing greater possibilities outside the limits of her lived experience. This “other” remains anchored by the artist’s genuine inner emotional life exploring how feelings, unconscious memory and experience is embodied in the gesture of line, in how the exploration into the self can lead to visual expressions that are universally relatable and authentic to lived experience.
The objective of these drawings is to illustrate the complicated space in dealing with the human bias, ignorance, and still manage to connect and understand a divergent perspective. This project shows how empathy and perspective taking bridges these gaps by putting the discussion into the space of universal human experience where we all can relate to each other.
Jessica Field works with installation, video and performance to create AI systems to show the impact of our environment on mental health and how individual histories and temperaments influence the ways that we live our lives. Jessica has exhibited in Sweden, Switzerland, Austria and Canada. She has shown in Electrohype 2008, the Montreal Museum of Fine Art, Oboro, Optica, the Museum Tingely and at Kunsthaus Graz.
Jessica teaches as a full-time sessional at Toronto Metropolitan University; she received her AOCAD at the Ontario College of Art and Design, Toronto, Ontario and her MFA at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec.
Artist website: jessicafield.ca
Credits
Coding Visual Layout Algorithm: Meera Balendran
Book Designer: Lisa Kiss Design
Video and Editing: Empty Cup Media
Images, Poetry, and Artificial Life Algorithms: Jessica Field
Content Warnings
This artwork contains content that may be triggering to some individuals.
Keywords: Anxiety | Grief | Psychiatry | Trauma
#RWMFest #MoreThanRebellion
This year, the exhibition in the Rendezvous With Madness Festival will be presented in-person throughout the festival from October 27 to November 6.
VENUE:
The exhibition is held at Workman Arts Offsite Gallery, Artscape Youngplace, 180 Shaw Street, Unit 302, Toronto.
DATES:
October 27 to November 6, 12 – 6 PM.
TOURS
Please join us for a guided tour on Thursday, November 3 at 5 PM
ACCESSIBILITY
If in-person access is a barrier, please contact Raine Laurent-Eugene at raine_lauenteguene@workmanarts.com.
Visit the Accessibility page for further festival information and wayfinding.
ALSO OF INTEREST
Anda Zeng & Natalie Wee / 2022 / English / Canada / 15 minutes
A Voice Through The Melt, a multi-disciplinary piece incorporating spoken word and music, is a collaboration between musician Anda Zeng and writer Natalie Wee. In this performance piece spanning 11 to 12 minutes, the collaborating artists open new pathways for entering belonging, mental health, selfhood, and grief.
Individually, Anda’s cinematic songwriting allows for an embodied engagement with feeling, whereas Natalie’s written words create a cerebral experience guided by the reader’s input. In this crossover collaboration, Anda’s voice and harp create a sonic resonance with excerpts from Natalie’s new poetry collection, Beast at Every Threshold, performed in spoken word style. This creative call and response not only allows audiences to engage the work in a new way but also explores new interdisciplinary possibilities.
Natalie Wee (she/her) is a queer creator whose work explores themes of race, gender, queerness and nationhood. She is deeply informed by grassroots communities. She has written two poetry collections: Our Bodies & Other Fine Machines (San Press, 2021) and Beast At Every Threshold (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2022). Born in Singapore to Malaysian parents, Natalie is currently a settler in Tkaronto.
Learn more at natalieweewrites.com.
Anda Zeng (she/her) writes cinematic night songs for the daydreamer. Her years of creating impressionistic blends of harp, piano, dreamy vocals, and visceral lyrics culminated in the release of her debut EP, Night Dress, produced by Jonathan Wu. At once soothing and wounding, Night Dress lures listeners through the small hours into dawn, through the thicket of our illusory selves into our vulnerable human core. Anda is also a vocalist, harpist, and songwriter for the band Tiger Balme.