October 14 – November 12, 2022
MALLORY DONEN
Back to the Future: Digital Art Through Embroidery
Artist Talk: Saturday October 22nd at Noon (part of the Art Crawl)
The work included in this exhibition has inspired a shift in Mallory Donen’s practice, towards processes rooted in traditional craft passed down through generations of women in her family. Her art explores the intersection of digital art and embroidery. By using the distinct grid format of cross-stitching, she creates connections between threads and pixels.
Donen embraces an approach of making art purposefully slow, emphasizing the value of time and dedication to her craft, in contrast to the fast-paced nature of digital technology. Her intention is to think purposefully about each handmade object she brings into the physical world and its potential impact.
Mallory Donen is a multidisciplinary artist residing in Vancouver on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil Waututh First Nations. Donen graduated in 2015 from University of the Fraser Valley with a Bachelor of Fine Arts, majoring in photography, painting, drawing, and print media. The following year she moved to Winnipeg for two years where she graduated with a Master of Fine Arts from University of Manitoba in 2017.
In 2019, she was an artist in residence at the Vermont Studio Center. From 2021-2022 Donen has been a recipient of Canada Council for the Arts, Research and Creation Grants for her art book project Invisible Labour: Cross-Stitching, Feminism, & the Collective Strength of Women and her cross-stitch portrait series Becoming a Pixel.
Donen continues to produce work for two solo exhibitions in the US for 2023. In February, Womanmade: Crafting Architecture and the Mundane will be showing in Michigan. In May, she will show The Art of Slowing Down: Women’s Labour & Craft in Indiana. Other recent exhibitions include: ArtRich 2021, Richmond Art Gallery, Art on Demand 4.4, the Reach Gallery & Museum, I Come From a Long Line of Machines, Ranger Station Art Gallery, Seeking the Periphery, Paul H. Cocker Gallery, Uncompressed, Rebecca Randall Bryan Art Gallery and Video Sound Archive.