Anna Torma: Permanent Danger

Permanent Danger takes its title from Anna Torma’s 2017 artwork of the same name, intimating meanings that encompass human strife and vulnerability, conditions of sustained risk, threatened natural environments, and the highs and lows of daily life. Her uniquely dense and vivid textiles are the perfect expression of such complex experiences, intensely layering details that speak to ideas of family and well-being, sexuality and identity, home and place. With a practice that is deeply embedded in her mother’s and grandmothers’ traditional embroidered Hungarian textiles, Torma takes her predecessors’ materials, motifs, and techniques into new personal, social, and cultural terrain. In the development of each narrative composition, the artist sources her materials from all over the world; the linen, cotton, silk, thread, and found materials she incorporates are selected for their distinct physical qualities as well as their cultural allusions, with references from popular culture to traditional Hungarian patterns and thrift shop aesthetics. The exhibition comprises 15 large-scale embroideries made by the artist since 2011 as she has come to terms with the world through boldly stitched statements. In Torma’s words: “…the most important things that the work must suggest are passion, freshness, and a new discovery every time for a viewer.”

Download the exhibition guide

Please note: This exhibition contains images of nudity and sexual imagery, visitors wishing to preview the exhibition can view all images of the artworks with their corresponding labels and didactics in this guide.

Video

Permanent Danger: In conversation with Anna Torma
Wednesday, June 16, 2021 | 6:30pm

Join artist Anna Torma and artist and curator Bryce Kanbara for a discussion of the ideas and issues explored in Torma’s work in advance of her solo exhibition Permanent Danger, opening this summer at the Art Gallery of Guelph. Intensely layering details that speak to ideas of family and well-being, sexuality and identity, home and place, Torma’s densely embroidered textiles reflect a distinct approach to materials as well as subject matter, with every element selected for its distinct qualities and cultural allusions. In Torma’s words: “The most important things that the work must suggest are passion, freshness, and a new discovery every time for a viewer.”

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Image detail: Anna Torma, Party with Dionysos (detail), 2008-2015, hand embroidered collage on linen fabric, silk thread, 185 x 150 cm. Collection of Patrick Cady / Musée d’Art Contemporain Singulier