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2023

Downtown Haliburton Sculpture Exhibition

$2,800.00

Orange Bloom

Kristi Chen

Orange Bloom

Rattan Reed & Steel


Orange Bloom is a sculpture that showcases the amalgamation of traditional craft practices and industrialized mediums. The basket is hand woven coated with an orange silicone finish attached to a welded curved steel armature. It is shaped into an organic form mimicking moments of a flower blooming. Utilizing lost basketry techniques in conjunction with manufactured finishes introduces the hybridization of time period and cultures. The basket vessel symbolizes the ancestral past while the silicone rubber coating reflects the current currency. The combination between the woven and the silicone rubber changes and evolves into another medium.


Kristi Chen


Parts of my identity are embedded in the pieces I created, not a portrait, but a sense of my fragmented existence. 


As a Toronto based multi-disciplinary cultural producer and artist, I am interested in themes of intergenerational, ancestral archives and how it relates to experiences of the diaspora. I was raised in Singapore, then the United States, Canada, and Hong Kong (SAR) which has made me cognizant of constant migration, influencing the subject matter and materiality in my practice. I seek to find comfort within my diasporic experience using sculptural forms to communicate identity. Imaginative creatures and dystopic, surreal environments are drawn from notions of my collective and personal experiences. Basket-weaving and smell are a big part of my sculptures, as it is a lost technique in my paternal side of the family.  It is important for me to address cross-cultural perspectives, trans-generational traumas and re-interpretations of ancient Asian ideologies. I currently use traditional weaving techniques with synthetic materials to speak towards the relationship of the ancient and the anthropocene. 

Kristi has a BF in Sculpture/Installation from OCAD University and has been exhibiting her work in group and solo shows in the GTA region since 2018. 


Artist Contact Information

Land Acknowledgment

We would like to acknowledge that we are located on ancestral lands, the traditional territory of the Mississauga Anishinaabe covered by the Williams Treaties. This area, known to the Anishinaabe as “Gidaaki”, has been inhabited for thousands of years – as territories for hunting, fishing, gathering and growing food.


For thousands of years Indigenous people have been the stewards of this place. The intent and spirit of the treaties that form the legal basis of Canada bind us to share the land “for as long as the sun shines, the grass grows and the rivers flow”.

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To find out more about all of the extraordinary things to see and do in the Haliburton Highlands in every season click here!

Location:

297 College Drive
Haliburton, ON K0M 1S0
Tel:

(705) 457-3555

Email:

info@haliburtonsculptureforest.ca

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© 2023 Haliburton Sculpture Forest

Images © 2021 Kristy L. Bourgeois | Youkie Stagg | Angus Sullivan | Noelle Dupret Smith | Teodora Vukosavljevic | Nadia Pagliaro

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