Emily van Lidth de Jeude

Exciting news, here... remember when I reluctantly gave up most of my teaching in order to concentrate on my art career? I still love teaching, and have managed to get a little in, but I really have been working my butt off in the art department, too. And finally I have a big announcement: It's official! Over the coming eight months I will be collecting stories in south-western BC, Germany and the Netherlands for a new installation called what.home . I've got some big grant applications sent off, a growing list of people to interview, a Kickstarter campaign , and most excitingly this beautiful invitation from Goleb in Amsterdam (photo). Would you like to tell me your stories about home? Find out how at the end of this post. First let me tell you what it's all about! Globalism, human transience and the prevalence of social media mean that our homes, lives, and thought processes have been fractured into a multitude of soundbites and images gone before we even...

Me at Art! Vancouver.   Painting: Lluis Garriga Filip In May I was walking down an aisle of exhibitors at the Art! Vancouver gala, wearing an altered wedding gown from my (dis)robe series . All around the skirt, painted arms reach up from the floor to embrace, protect, or maybe pull the wearer down. That’s me, in this case: T he wearer. It’s an open-fronted wedding dress, now that I’ve altered it, and I wore it with a nude body suit, including false pubic hair, made of a discarded brown wig. Women laughed as I walked along; a couple of them thanked me, without saying why. And one of these, who stopped me in my tracks with a desperate-looking smile and wide eyes, held me tightly by the arm and said, “thank you. Thank you for doing this. Thank you so much,” as her male companion leered at me, then squatted down close beside me and tugged at the false pubic hair, his face only inches from my crotch. You know what I did? Nothing. Because really, it wasn’t all that unexpe...

Question: Why is your art full of other people's words when you could have written any of them yourself? The MAMA Project in Bastion Square, Victoria. Photo by Linda Goldstein. I'm getting ready for this year's MAMA Project installation at the Deer Lake Gallery, and posting here and there on social media some of the words that the project contains. These words all come from interviews with other mothers. Despite being a writer, myself, with way too much to say, myself, if you ask my family, most of my work comes from interviews. Why? Because people need to be heard. I have a stage. Why would I not share it? Bigger than that obvious bit of logic, though, is that I don't want to sit on a little soapbox as an artist. It's really very easy to fall into that comfy place, especially as somebody with so much to say (irony: here I am posting to my blog... again). But my own ideas by themselves are rather limiting, even to me. I could absolutely have created an inst...

I'm gearing up for a new iteration of the MAMA Project, including a bunch of new portraits and voice recordings, and probably quite a different installation, since the space is smaller and different from any I've used before. The MAMA Project 2017 will happen at the Deer Lake Gallery in Burnaby, BC, from May 11th until June 2. Performance just before Mothers' Day on May 13th. More info here: mamaproject.com And here are a few previews from the audio I'm editing right now! The reality of motherhood is so huge; so diverse; so life-changing. There is no measuring how much motherhood changes us as people, or how much change we create in the world through our mothering.