Samuelle Grande: Out of the blue

A 1921 image of Amelia Earhart entitled Goddess of Flight is the source of this piece’s inception. In the original photo, Earhart is perched precariously atop a globe in a skimpy outfit, a pose that seems incongruous with her accomplished career as a pilot. Grande draws out the vulnerability of Earhart’s position by rendering her feet from the image in the familiar setting of a pool. Here, Grande uses this environment to underscore the feelings of intense vulnerability one experiences from being “almost naked” in a communal setting and asks us how specific (and often female gendered) bodies are positioned and asked to perform in public spaces.

In Shelter, Grande’s visual storytelling takes shape as a vignette detailing the ephemera that colours our figurative, and literal, landscapes. Assembling disparate media, from children’s books to articles on aviation, she explores the ways we draw from a variety of sources to create stories that protect and sustain us in our daily lives.

Drawn from a snapshot of Montreal’s dynamic political theatre scene, Secret Garden captures an intimate moment that evokes the shifting boundary between public and private space. Based on a photograph taken in the monastery garden of the Religious Hospitallers of Saint Joseph in Montreal, Grande examines how walled gardens create private spaces that encourage furtive gestures – like hiding one’s purse – and secrecy.

Right: Samuelle Grande, Closing Time, 2022, acrylic and oil on canvas. Courtesy of the artist

Part of Grande’s Cups Series created in response to the increase in “spiking” – the non-consensual drugging of drinks – within incidents of sexual violence on university campuses, Closing Time depicts the feelings of voicelessness experienced by victims. In this piece, Grande uses bright blue tones to reference the “freeze” response – the physical state in which the nervous system begins to shut down in crisis and victims are often left unable to speak or move. In this condition, one’s perception often becomes unclear, captured here in the depiction of the glass, a lens on one’s inner world, which is blurry while the outside world remains in stark clarity – a state that can make communication difficult.

In Hall, Grande looks at the performance of bodies in public space, focusing on the surreal nature of uniforms and how they cloak bodies with social authority used to communicate hierarchies and structure in communal spaces. Using the chef’s uniform as an example, the artist asks us to consider how our experience of eating – fork in hand – is shifted by these rules and sense of order, and how they play into what we consider to be “good” food.