Linda Duvall is a visual and media artist who works and presents within gallery contexts, on the web, and within defined public communities. Linda Duvall’s projects focus on how individual identities are formed and revealed within a societal context. Her work often mimics the fieldwork of sociologists as she collects oral histories and records ordinary conversations in order to discern meanings hidden in mundane and familiar language. Her work consistently addresses public knowledge and presentation posited in contrast to the more intimate and possibly private material that is initially hidden.
Duvall's projects address the subjective constructed nature of narratives. She starts by setting up conditions or a framework and then lets the process unfold. She puts strangers together in a situation for interaction. This interaction with its surprises and tensions, rather than any final resolution, is her primary point of focus. She looks for ways to engage audiences in this interaction.
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Upcoming Activities
As Is : With Love
Linda Duvall and Heidi Schaefer
May 5 – 27, 2012
Opening Reception Saturday May 5
2:00 – 4:00 p.m.
Tea will be served, along with Indian sweets, matrimonial cake and chocolate fiddle diddles
Linda Duvall and Heidi Schaefer are both commuters – Linda between Saskatoon and Toronto, Heidi between Toronto and Manchester. Both places welcome, nurture and inspire them. Yet, there is also sadness about the place that each leaves behind.
With this project, Duvall conspires to bring together the bucolic setting of her farmhouse in rural Saskatchewan into the streetscape of Little Italy in Toronto. Schaefer will start with a favourite place name common to both for her reveries.
Curated by Michelle Johnson
As Is Project Space
347 Montrose Avenue,
Toronto ON M5G 3G9
Exterior Viewing until 10:00 p.m. daily
AFTER THE OPENING, ONLY EXTERIOR VIEWING WILL BE AVAILABLE
Contact 416 360 0273
Click here for more info on As Is: With Love
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Linda Duvall and Peter Kingstone will be co-presenting at the
Open Engagement Conference
in Portland Oregon
in May, 2012
For the panel at Open Engagement Duvall and Kingstone will present a few brief clips from the project Living in 10 East Lessons. They will initiate a discussion concerning implications of this project.
Areas of discussion will include the significance of the artists reversing the traditional teacher-student role, and in the process opening up areas of knowledge that are often undervalued or not available to a broader public. Other areas will include the implications of one of the artists being physically visible in each interview, and the reasons behind not identifying the lifestyles of the participants.
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Linda Duvall's video Tumbleweed is included in the upcoming
Currents: Santa Fe International New Media Festival
June 22 - July 8, 2012
in Santa Fe, New Mexico
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Linda Duvall will be participating in the upcoming
collaboratively-structured artist residency
d’Clinic - Mixer
in Lendava, Slovenia in September 2012
This residency involves working in a studio setting in which one is paired with others from very different cultural and artistic backgrounds. The residency focuses on process and research with a public presentation at the end, including a published artist’s book that highlights the various stages of research and production during the residency.
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Recent Projects
Linda's video Tumbleweed was included in the screening
SPANE Performance Art in the Natural Environment
at Artscape Gibralter Point, Toronto 2011
and in PAVED Media Arts Members' Screening
Saskatoon 2011
Linda presented at ISEA 2011 Istanbul
Her talk was entitled
CTRL – O Confronting Barriers to Communication in Interdisciplinary Projects
Linda presented at the
International Sociology Conference in Vancouver in July 2011
on the panel
Speech Acts: Conversation and collaboration in research-based visual art and media art practices (Canada & UK)
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"Duvall’s work is as much about sociology and anthropology as it is about art. She takes, however, the role of ‘rebel sociologist’ … her interest is less in scientific methodology than in constructing work that fascinates in its final presentation."
Linda Jansma 'Sanctioned Deception' in catalogue Linda Duvall Enough White Lies 2005
"Linda Duvall engineers temporary relationships between strangers. Her social engagement art works bring people together to share stories across divides of culture, class and region. She uses artifice to encourage authenticity. These initially awkward meetings soon melt barriers to reveal a common humanity. The projects are fuelled by a faith in the healing properties of purposeless dialogue. Success is measured by feelings of quality engagement rather than the achievement of some end. The work is goalless but not guileless. The encounters are not ephemeral; Duvall records some of the sessions, others can be eavesdropped, so we can marvel at the richness of interpersonal discourse."
David Garneau 'Engaging Strangers' in catalogue Linda Duvall Where were the Mothers? 2009
