UHN | EXPOSURES: EARLY DAYS ON THE FRONT LINES OF THE PANDEMIC
Megan Landes & Brant Slomovic | Exposures: Early Days On The Front Lines Of The Pandemic
350 Dundas Street West, Toronto
April 2-14, 2022
Bau-Xi Gallery is proud to partner with the University Health Network (UHN) to present Exposures: Early Days on the Front Lines of the Pandemic, a two-person exhibition featuring works by clinician-artists Megan Landes and Brant Slomovic. Exposures is on view from April 2-April 14 at Bau-Xi Photo.
Exposures consists of distinct bodies of work from two emergency physicians on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic. For Megan Landes and Brant Slomovic, the strangeness, fear, and uncertainty that characterized the early days of the pandemic prompted them, for the first time, to integrate their medical and creative practices. This two-person exhibition brings together both intimate impressions of their experiences, but also reveals a rare glimpse into the vulnerability of those moments. By engaging both the medical and the visual arts community, the artists wish to invite a conversation about how visual arts can harness ways of seeing, expressing, and ultimately, healing on the front lines.
When speaking of her return to works on paper, Megan Landes states:
“In my off hours, I began drawing portraits of my colleagues in full personal protective equipment (PPE). Soon after, other images spilled onto the paper, images haunting us on the front lines: opacified x-rays, overrun health systems spilling into field hospitals, moments of exhaustion, rage and despair. Along with my colleagues, I wrestled with being warrior and human, resolute and broken, okay and not okay. Drawing became an outlet for that tension.”
Reflecting on this new body of work, Brant Slomovic states:
“I felt a need to document this time, if not to make sense of it, then simply to record that it happened in this way. All images were shot on my iPhone through a protective Ziploc® bag — a hack to limit contamination and spread of the virus and to ease disinfection. In effect, the resulting images evoke the strangeness and visceral experiences of working in a time that was anything but normal.”
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MEGAN LANDES
BRANT SLOMOVIC
UHN FOUNDATION
EMERGENCY AT UHN