Aiden Kirkegaard: Tracing Memory – Reception

Visit the Dal Schindell Gallery from June 24 to August 9, 2024, to view Tracing Memory, an exhibition of paintings by Aiden Kirkegaard. You’re also invited to a reception with Aiden on Wednesday, July 10, 4–7 pm.

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

Aiden Kirkegaard’s work investigates how the physical and material processes of painting can elicit memory and dreaming. Through the material research of painting, Tracing Memory explores what memory could look like and how it behaves. Painting becomes a mode through which Aiden accesses personal memories and imagines alternative realities. Her physical studio space becomes a dwelling place for dreaming.

In large-scale shaped canvases, imagery of doorways and windows from Aiden’s previous homes function as a place of origin. Memories, even those unremembered, line the walls of the spaces we grew up in, they are embedded and woven into its architecture. This imagery is used as a space to hold and embrace playful mark-making and colour application.

While their reference to home architecture is rooted in real spaces, Aiden’s paintings are also imaginary. Moments spoken and movements made in these spaces are transformed into form and colour. The painted mark traces memory; with liveliness it manifests into a visual representation of daydreaming.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Aiden Kirkegaard is a painter working in Vancouver and a 2024 MFA graduate from Emily Carr University of Art + Design. Aiden received her BFA with a Minor in Art History from the University of British Columbia Okanagan in 2020. In 2023, Aiden received the Canada Graduate Scholarships – Master’s Award (CGS M) for her research studies at Emily Carr. Aiden acknowledges that she is a guest creating work on the unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples, including the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh nations.

The Dal Schindell Gallery is located at Regent College, which sits on the traditional, ancestral, unceded territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) First Nation.