10 September 2020 now extended until 29 October 2020, 7pm!
Virtual launch 10 September 2020
“When the soul wants to experience something she throws out an image in front of her and then steps into it. ”
The
sun, like the hub of a wheel, is an unmoved mover. The centre is static
yet the perimeter rotates and the result is that we trundle – or even
fly, as the case may be – onward with a cosmic momentum. The
Aristotelian theory of the “unmoved mover,” which some dismiss as
absurd, puts forth the idea that for every motion there is a mover and
that at the mystic centre, the original mover is still. This concept
speaks to the experience that the inanimate objects and images around
us, occupying a seemingly static existence, can animate shifts and
changes within our consciousness.
Rituals are created and performed in order to facilitate transformation.
A “wünshelrute” (wishing rod), dowsing rod or witching rod is an
instrument used to locate subterranean sources of water. In water
witching, when someone suspects a valuable source lying beneath, a
ritual search or sacred sourcing is performed to locate and move toward
that which could nourish and sustain.
In A Dictionary of Symbols, J.E. Circlot writes “to leave the
circumference for the centre is the equivalent of moving from the
exterior to the interior, from form to contemplation, from multiplicity
to unity, from space to spacelessness, from time to timelessness.” Unmoved Movers is
an inquiry into the perennial and regenerative nature of symbols that
are revitalized with each contemplation and explores the idea of symbol
as “mover.”
__________
A body of water, The many within the one, Towards centre, Darkness & light, Energetics, Towards expansion, Her proliferated reflections and The Braid are
a series of painted papier-mâché witching rods that rest at the edges
of the gallery, leaning with upward reaching arms, poised for
conduction. These sculptures take the forked form of a Y, a symbol that
has been associated with the sacred feminine and evokes both celebration
and connectivity.
Cotton fabric is pulled in measured loops through a woven backing to create the hooked rug. Here, at the edge of things is a two-part textile work that suggests adjacent thresholds or portals. Sun wheel and Nyx explore
the collectively experienced transitional spaces of sunrise and
moonrise and welcome contemplation of the liminal spaces occupied in the
everyday.
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Heidi Meixner works in sculpture, painting and textiles. Her practice is
inspired by folk art and traditions as well as alternative
philosophies. Through slow-process materials and techniques, she
explores the relationship between ritual and the everyday as an antidote
to the pace and modes of engagement in contemporary culture. She is
continuously drawn to the soft, versatile and buffering nature of
textiles and is motivated by the vast history and contexts of fibre art.
She lives on the traditional unceded territories of the Musqueam,
Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations known as Vancouver, B.C. In 2009 she
received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in visual arts from Simon
Fraser University.
