Kasie Campbell
What does it mean to you to be an artist working in Edmonton?
Edmonton has been home for the last eight years as my partner and I raise our little family. The initiatives of my family have been very important to my studio life and I feel that I have been very well-supported by our art community in good times and bad. I have really grown to love living and working as an artist here in Edmonton. It has afforded me the opportunity to travel and share work beyond our city, in turn creating ties back to this little gem. As we struggle through the pandemic and the weight of the world feeling so heavy, our art community has proven to be resilient and adaptable as we re-invent ways of coming together, showing support and care towards one another.
Kasie Campbell, Mamma, what if?, 2020. Inkjet print, 24” x 18”. Installation view of The Scene, Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton, 2021. Photo: Art Gallery of Alberta.
Through performance and sculptural work, Kasie Campbell is interested in exploring ideas surrounding objectification, the male gaze and the depiction of the female body with respect to history. Her latest series of work deals with the grief of losing her mother, infertility/miscarriage and her own fear of dying. With the birth of her daughter and post-partum anxieties exasperated by the COVID-19 pandemic, Campbell began to pump her breastmilk daily and to use the milk bags to record her thought and worries. For Campbell, “The act of pumping breastmilk and freezing it was a ritualistic and meditative way for me to cope and ease anxieties around getting sick and not being able to feed my baby.”
This work was supported by the Edmonton Arts Council with technical support from Klyment Tan.
