An art review is personal. The writer could be newly in love, or afraid of a call from the doctor. Their reactions will be shaped by feelings outside of the artist or curator’s control.

I visited this exhibition with my fifteen-year-old daughter. We had a lovely day. We talked and laughed, and it certainly affected how I saw the show. The works made me think of her future and our present in the way that a sunny day can lead to thoughts of the upcoming storm. How can we have such a perfect day when the world is in political turmoil? What I’m trying to say is that this review is a record of the thoughts that came to me on a specific day, in a specific mood, while I walked through the exhibit. Take them with a grain of salt, as they say. It’s personal. And as everything seems to be these days, it’s also political.

Every work in this show feels personal. Each work bears the mark of the artist’s hand and eye, ranging from pottery, embroidery, and rug-hooking to video and photography. It all, also, feels deeply political. In fact, most of the works that curator, Brandt Eisnor, included in the show walk this tightrope between personal interior worlds and political statements projected outward.

One of the first works I noticed was a folksy rug-hooked amalgamation of Canadian and American flags by Laura Kenney, with the words “We have to be friends otherwise you’ll beat me up,” spelled out in soft hues of green, teal, and navy blue fabric. Each day the show was up, these words became more poignant as the political situation with our southern neighbors teetered between surreal and absurdly terrifying. The work and the title seem to be shouting out that famous refrain of second-wave feminism and activism: “The personal is political.” It certainly makes the case that now, more than ever, this phrase is accurate and vital.

The landscape is personal/political. Throughout the show are works with a rural feel, and in this context, a heightened sense of the economic, environmental, and social threats to rural communities emerges. Curtis Botham’s large, meticulously detailed graphite drawings, like Land for Sale, Trenton, 2018, give a gravitas to raw landscapes and people; and his pieces, like Essential worker, 2021, shine a light on those that may go underappreciated. Botham’s work is, perhaps, asking us to look at how we value things, places, and people. The laboured technique of the drawings seems to be saying: look here, value this. They are interestingly shown alongside Andrew Quon’s large-scale photographs of human bodies in nature. These photographs point us towards other questions. In The Betrayal, 2023, a lone body lying in a swamp resembles a crime scene. Is the body lost, discarded, or inconsequential? Or, as in Uproot, 2021, in which a naked person climbs a large tree, is the work to be seen as a celebration of nature? Together the photos seem to be telling us that nature is at once awe inspiring and equally full of a secret, fearful power.

Laura Kenney’s rug-hookings are the most distinctly rural works in the show and also the most political. The materials and technique conjure familiar scenes to anyone who has spent time in the Maritimes, while the messages woven into the pieces are by far the most overtly political. In one piece, we see a rough faceoff between two people on horseback in an unadorned and direct style. One rider holds a Canadian flag with a heart instead of a maple leaf, the other rider holds a flag with “Trump 2024” written across it. The message is made all the more relatable with the use of accessible materials and a simple style.

The familiar materials are political. In an age where money and material success seem to win elections, the use of natural fabrics in works by Laura Kenney, Lux Gow-Habrich, and Monique Silver seem almost subversive. Gow-Habrich’s complicated and exquisite wall hanging, Queen Mothers of Eastern and Western Skies, 2023-ongoing, evokes the body and the sacred. The care and attention to detail elevates the content, and the materials themselves—cotton, wool, hand-spun yarns, silkscreen, glass, seed beads, and more—imbue the piece with a powerful significance. Nearby hang multiple works by Monique Silver. Her use of embroidery and line, in works such as Dreamer, 2024, and Body Mapping: Shame/Pride, 2024, illustrate bodies in liminality, existing between tensions of multiple emotional states. The work of these artists exists as much in the materials chosen as in the techniques used or the concepts introduced. The materials have something important to say about how we think about the connection between our interior and exterior lives.

Throughout the exhibit Shauna MacLeod’s earthenware clay works made me think that the emotional is not only political, but that it is also part of the economic ecosystem of society at large. Meds, 2022 is a large, vase-sized bright yellow reproduction of a 25 mg Sertraline pill used to treat depression and anxiety disorders. This piece seems particularly striking as a visual representation of the hand-made human side of things coupled with the big-pharma approach to the human condition. Other vase-like pieces are emblazoned with PTSD symptoms and PTSD healing phrases. Some of the pieces use materials to create a tension and deliberate “flaws” that seem to underscore our shared suffering, hope, and influence. Like these vessels, we are complicated, flawed, and under the influence of a massive economic and political structure we can barely dream of eluding or understanding.

Then there is Miya Turnbull’s work that ranges from origami eyes, masks, and video. In a way, her work unites much of what the show is about to me. When the personal is political, the masks we wear make a statement. What we choose to hide and what we choose to reveal tells a story. Much of her work uses photography as a basis to create something tactile. In Self-Portrait Masks series, 2018-2023, the artist uses digital prints of her face as a basis to create papier-mâché masks. Eyes multiply, noses split, skin moves, and the rows of masks take on multitudes of personalities. Are they revealing or protecting the imagined wearer’s personality? Are they emotional cover or political subterfuge? It is not clear, but they resonate with this time of social media and projected ideas, opinions, fears, and loves. Her video piece in which she interacts with masks (that combine the touch of the hand with digital photography) as well as loose stretchy fabric, brings the whole show together in a visual metaphor. The materials we surround ourselves with, the masks we make, and what we decide to reveal is personal. The personal is political and art is both of these things.

I am finishing this review in the laundromat, my final spin has spun but my mind still races as I remember visiting the exhibit with my daughter. I love to write here, as the machines hum and the people chatter. It seems to clear my thoughts. My daughter also loves our trips to the laundromat—we always draw or write together while we wait to fold our clothes. This has nothing to do with the show I’m reviewing. It’s just something personal about me.

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This Seems Personal featuring Andrew Quon, Miya Turnbull, Curtis Botham, Laura Kenney, Shauna MacLeod, Lux Gow-Habrich, and Monique Silver was curated by Brandt Eisner for Confederation Centre Art Gallery, in Charlottetown, 14 December 2024 – 13 April 2025.