September 9, 2023 @ 4:00 am – January 8, 2024 @ 4:59 am
Soaking Wet and On Fire: Ceramics and Painting by Natalka Husar
September 9, 2023 – January 7, 2024
Lobby. 1st Floor
Included with admission. Free for Gardiner Friends.
This lobby exhibition brings together early ceramics and a recent painting by Toronto-based artist Natalka Husar. Widely celebrated as a painter, few people are aware that Husar began her career with a series of ceramic sculptures. On view for the first time in over 40 years, her irreverent depictions of food, clothing, and care packages explore themes of cultural identity and belonging in the Ukrainian-Canadian diaspora. Seen alongside a recent monumental painting, her ceramics are revealed to be instrumental to her formation as an artist.
About the Artist
Natalka Husar
Natalka Husar was born in 1951 in New Jersey to Ukrainian immigrant parents. She graduated from Rutgers University in 1973 and that same year moved to Toronto where she lives and works. Husar has exhibited extensively across Canada, is represented in numerous public collections, including the National Gallery of Canada, and has received support from the Canada Council, Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council, and SSHRC. Husar’s earliest exhibited works were trompe l’oeile ceramics, but after working as a flight attendant in the early 1980s, she began painting, with subject matter drawn from travel-work experience, and the paradoxes and conflicts of the Ukrainian émigré experience.
Supported By
Installation view of Soaking Wet and On Fire: Ceramics and Painting by Natalka Husar, 2023, Gardiner Museum. Photo: Toni Hafkenscheid
Left: Ma! I don’t wanna… / Мамо! я не хочу…, 1977; Right: Closeted Youth / Юність вже в шафі, 1977. Photo: Toni Hafkenscheid
Clockwise from bottom left: Breakfast January 7 / Сніданок 7-го січня, 1977; TV Dinner Sviat Vechir / Дванадцять страв, 1977; Sometimes, I feel like that at the banquet /А я часами так чуюся на бенкеті, 1977. Photo: Toni Hafkenscheid
We’re going to their house on Sunday, but I really don’t know what to bring her; that woman has everything! / Ми йдемо до них у неділю, але я абсолютно не знаю, що їй подарувати; вона все має!, 1977. Photo: Toni Hafkenscheid
Exhibition Programs
