Living Curtain

Living Curtain is a site-specific installation in the botanical garden at Leighton Art Centre by Calgary-based artist Svea Ferguson (BFA '15, Drawing).

Living Curtain is a continuation of the artist’s interests in the ability of commonplace materials to reflect and disrupt our physical experiences. Ferguson’s material interests come from years of using primarily linoleum and vinyl flooring in her work and have since expanded to include many flexible industrial materials like rubber, PVC and various pliable thermoplastics. These ultra-processed materials are most often designed to be installed in domestic and industrial spaces and are made to withstand aggressive physical interaction in their daily lives. Ferguson’s sculptures take these materials out of their usual context to explore their relationship with the spaces they inhabit and the human body. Her work often anthropomorphizes the chosen material, exposing its autonomy and ability to dictate its final form. 

Living Curtain, made from strips of polyvinyl chloride (PVC), explores this material’s potential liveliness and relationship to its environment through the lens of ‘deep time,’ a term that refers to the immense span of geological or cosmic time that has shaped our world. When placed within the context of the LAC’s botanical garden, Living Curtain complicates the contentious relationship between what we accept as being living with what we consider to be lifeless.