Shannon Bool
February 25 to June 18, 2023
The Shape of Obus highlights Shannon Bool’s recent research on the figure of Le Corbusier, a Swiss-French pioneer of modern architecture. Bool’s work focusses on a series of erotic drawings Le Corbusier made in Algeria during the 1930s and the interior spaces he designed for his apartment in Paris and for the Villa Savoye.
By examining the flip side of modernist currents, the artist reveals repressed aesthetic influences in both visual art and architecture.
Shannon Bool’s recent practice takes on many forms, including tapestries, silk paintings, collages, sculptures, and photograms. Her work gravitates around a central theme: a critique of Modernism through unconventional material processes, combined with her own interpretation of psychoanalytical concepts.
This project was made possible thanks to the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Fondation du Musée d’art de Joliette.
Presented with support from:
VIDEO
Join Dr. Tammer El-Sheikh, assistant professor of Art History at York University, for a lecture he has titled “The Sign is Stronger than the Bombs”*: Ghosts of North African Modernism in Shannon Bool’s The Shape of Obus. In this presentation El-Sheikh considers how Bool’s reflections on colonial architecture in Algeria might enter into a dialogue with post-colonial experiments in public art and architecture by North African and Middle Eastern Modernists like Farid Belkahia (1934-2014) and his peers in The Casablanca School, and Hassan Fathy (1900-1989) in Egypt.
* Choukri Mesli et al. From the Manifesto of the Algerian Aouchem Group (1967).
Learn more about The Shape of Obus from the artist herself! Shannon Bool joins us virtually from Germany in this fascinating talk about what inspired the work in the exhibition and how it all came together.
Join the Musée d’art de Joliette’s Curator of Contemporary Art, Anne-Marie St-Jean Aubre, as she leads us through an in-depth exploration of Shannon Bool’s work in the Kelowna Art Gallery’s newest exhibition, The Shape of Obus.
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