Shaken and Stirred shakes and stirs

Queen’s students display strength through art show

Iris Fryer's painting Itinerant
Image by: Ramna Safeer
Iris Fryer's painting Itinerant.

The Union Gallery’s Shaken and Stirred exhibition features the work of Queen’s student artists, each completed over the course of a semester.

The gallery showcased the juried exhibition from March 26 to May 22. It’s the culmination of a collective term-long effort of Queen’s Bachelor of Fine Arts students Iris Fryer, Emily Gong, Brian Hoad, Cindy Kwong, Lauren McEwan and Art Conservation student Julie Driver, a photographer.

One of the showcased paintings begins at the top of the canvas with a coldly shaded face. The eyes are closed and mouth is slightly open. From the right eye bleeds trickling red veins intertwined with small Chinese inscriptions.

Within these inscriptions lies Emily Gong’s inspiration for the piece, entitled Manchu Lineage.

“I think our generation can easily lose touch and become disconnected from our cultural roots,” Emily Gong, BFA ’15, said.

“I remember standing among the ruins of the Old Summer Palace in Beijing and feeling a strong sense of loss. That emotional connection made this a particularly personal and difficult piece to paint.”

Emily Gong’s painting Manchu Lineage. (Photo by Ramna Safeer)

Like Gong’s artwork, the exhibition’s other pieces convey a sense of a journey. They explore themes of identity, mental health and belonging, and each challenge conventional ideas of space. 

For instance, a painting by artist Iris Fryer entitled Itinerant is a somber image of two people on a bus. One of them has earphones in, looking thoughtfully out the window. The other sits in the seat behind with his or her head down. The figure is visible only by a thin strand of evening light.

Beyond the window of the bus, we see a blur of green land, a tinge of blue and the blank white of sky passing by. The piece evokes a sense of being stuck in motion.

It makes the viewer wonder whether the motion is towards home, or from it. Fryer said the painting reflects her understanding of a student’s knowledge of home and the sense of travelling to and from it.

“Moving to Kingston from my hometown meant that I took the bus on the 401 continually, back and forth to Queen’s, a feeling that I’m sure many students are familiar with,” Fryer said.

Regardless of the viewer’s individual interpretation, each painting promises to look beyond simple explanations for simple ideas. Each artist has taken an aspect of their own lives, shaken and stirred it to reveal a tangible insight, and transferred it into various art mediums.

Artist Emily Gong said each piece was connected through a cohesive message of strength.

“Regardless of how different all of the pieces are, the whole exhibition gives off a unified sense of strength and adversity from diversity. Each piece represents coming face-to-face with your own challenges and moving forward.”

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