Recent Mount Allison graduate Emma Delaney is a queer conceptual artist from rural New Brunswick.
She is one of the many Bachelor of Fine Arts grads who had to suddenly pack up her studio and leave campus due to COVID-19.
Without a graduation ceremony or the annual Owens Art Gallery grad show, Delaney had to find other means to create and present her work.
With the help of Struts Gallery and Faucet Media Center, Delaney connected with two video artists in America to participate in a mentorship program.
The mentorship, also known as the Time Share program, involves Dani Leventhal and Sheilah Wilson, also known as Dani and Sheila Restack, who live in Ohio.
Delaney says that due to her sudden isolation, the subject of her work changed from her original plan and instead focuses on how she relates to her surroundings.
ED: I live in Albert County, which is not too far from Sackville. Living there has really influenced the work that I’m making. I identify as a queer female artist and having that in a really rural community where there isn’t a large queer presence. I’m trying to find a place and space within these rural landscapes. I’m in a queer body so that’s where my work has gone to exploring the idea of the vulnerable body, especially because a lot of my work is nude, and nude in these landscapes. It’s paired next to things that are rural iconography. So there’s like some clips of me being tattooed, and I’m getting like this church tattooed on my leg, which is just, it’s very much a rural iconography, an old church, and sharpening of a chainsaw, and these clear cut areas. So they’re visual cues, but they kind of allow you to understand where it’s being filmed and the atmosphere of it all, but it’s very open to interpretation.
From right to left: A still from “Move Through the Room Carefully” and a still from “Lonely Lovely.” Stills provided by Emma Delaney
Delaney says that she was afraid that she would make less work after graduating under such strange circumstances, but is creating regularly in isolation.
ED: I just got in a habit of trying to at least weekly, but I definitely tried daily to just go out and shoot all the time and build a portfolio to pull from which was not my intention when I first started it. I just started doing that because I was by myself, and I never really worked on videos by myself. It was always collaboratively, so it became this ritual thing to go and collect images, videos, and stuff like that.
Her two video works, “Move Through the Room Carefully” and “Lonely Lovely” will be available for viewing this month.
Delaney says she is grateful for Struts as they provide equipment and gallery space free of charge for her project.
ED: A lot of galleries have done a lot of amazing things through social media and through online presence and I think that’s super great. But for this work I really didn’t want it to exist solely online. Just because it’s intimate and it’s something that should be seen in a gallery.
She is in the process of setting up her work at Struts, and will be available for viewing in small groups for COVID-19 safety.
For more information or updates, check on Struts and Faucet’s social media pages.
For more of Emma Delaney, check out her project Friends of Fundy or her Instagram.
By Meg Cunningham
