Eva Ennist is a Canadian artist and arts educator, who joins the residency program to investigate and build on her strong Estonian roots. Eva uses mixed media techniques and the residency in Tartu is similarily built upon work gloves as the medium. Eva will be staying and working in Tartu during the month of November and she will be presenting her work toward the end of her project.
Ennist at exhibition (“TRUST”) opening May 2016 Toronto
Born in and raised in Canada, Eva is the daughter of an Estonian émigré, and her home language was always Estonian. In this regard the residency program is for her a creative break to embrace this heritage and develop further a theme based on old work gloves that used to belong to her mother. The artist herself describes her project:
The proposed project would be based on a collection of more than a dozen of my mother’s old work gloves. Gloves that she repaired and rebuilt many times over many years from parts of other worn out gloves. These salvaged “artifacts” would be scanned, perhaps manipulated and digitally printed onto large format fabric and/or paper. Actual fabrics, other textures and photos acquired or created in Tartu would be printed or collaged onto the original “altered” glove images. I see these assemblages as actual and symbolic references to my mother’s tireless work ethic and survival instincts as well as to my own drive to sustain an art practice based on reusing, and repurposing both materials and meaning through analog and digital approaches.
Gloves are a new medium and concept for Eva, who is better known for her carefully balanced works with various fibres, forming nests, temples or other intimate structures. Her latest exhibition “TRUST: new sculpture & mixed media” looks into the intricate networks of trust in the human society, using such structures as metaphors. Eva’s fascination with fibres is highlighted by her long carreer in the OCAD University, Toronto as an assistant professor and the head of the Fibre Program since 2009.
Potential 72“ x 14” concrete, steel, resin, reed 2016
Eva’s works have been exhibited extensively in Canada both as solo as well as group exhibitions. Her previous residency programs have taken Eva to India and Thailand where she has also studied the art of paper making. Her month in Estonia will not be her first visit to this country, but will be her first significant artistic contribution to the local scene.
A more thorough overview and gallery of her work is available on Eva’s homepage.