Miya Turnbull

Saturday, August 19, 1 – 5pm: Drop-In Origami Making

 

Working primarily as a mask artist, Miya Turnbull explores the multiple identities we inhabit and communicate to others through our faces, bodies and histories. Focussing on self-portraits, she uses a photo-mask technique to make life-like and distorted representations of her own face. By wearing these masks as a false face or second skin, the artist explores the tension between the interior self and outward appearances.

Turnbull shares: “I am drawing from the traditional uses of masks worn for disguise, transformation and protection, as well as a metaphor for persona, archetypes and identity. Through each self-portrait, I explore my experiences, perceptions, inner world and my mixed heritage, making these visible, tangible and wearable. Ironically, I am placing my likeness on the front of the mask, while at the same time concealing my face behind it. I’m particularly interested in the tensions between private and public (what we present to the world and what we hide), notions of beauty and the grotesque (and blurring the line between them), and bi-racial identity (duality and ‘in-between-ness’).”

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Miya Turnbull is a multi-disciplinary visual artist of mixed Japanese Canadian ancestry. She graduated from the University of Lethbridge (Alberta) with a BFA and currently lives in Kjipuktuk (Halifax, NS). Turnbull has exhibited her masks, photos, performances and video works in galleries in Canada and internationally, most recently at Acadia University Art Gallery in Nova Scotia. Her artwork has appeared on the covers of Visual Arts News (Atlantic Canada), Art Reveal (Germany) and Masks Literary Magazine (Columbia College Chicago Library), as well as being featured on digital platforms such as Vogue (Thailand), Planted Journal (Italy), Gata Magazine (Japan), Oficina Palimpsestus (Brazil), and The Perfect Magazine (UK).

 

Project developed with support from Arts Nova Scotia.