9 Jan – 9 April 2024
1640 Electra Boulevard, Sidney BC, V8L 5V4
Daily, 3:30am – 1:30am
The venue at the Victoria International Airport is the café area before security.
Artist Statement
My work explores the fluid relationship of women and the domestic interior. I look at the historical Western domestic home as a place synonymous with women and turn to the histories of the spaces themselves. Smaller Acts is the first collection of works in which I display concepts of my own personal spacial histories.
My paintings seek out the compiled architecture of various invented or referential rooms. I look at these spaces like skeletal blueprints; things that hold and share generational emotion and experience. Areas of most prevalence in my art being the kitchen and the bedroom, both viewed as the most private spaces to exist within while also being voyeuristically public and invasive.
I aim to depict the hauntedness of spaces that women resided or still reside in, suspending viewers inside with uneasy feelings of familiarity or a willingness to confront histories that aren’t theirs.
Bio
Zaida Gerritsen is a visual artist living and working in Victoria, BC on unceded territory of the Lekwungen-speaking peoples of the Esquimalt, Songhees and WSÁNEĆ nations. Working with the traditional medium of oil paint, wood-working, and a knowledge of interior architectural histories, her practice explores the tensions between depictions of domestic environments and the reality of those who existed within them. Gerritsen holds a BFA. (Hons), in Visual Art from the University of Victoria and has been the recipient of the President’s Award, the Dr. Milada Horakova Scholarship, the John Wyatte Price Book Prize in Photography and the Diane Mary Hallam Achievement Award. Gerritsen has had many opportunities to showcase and curate works in gallery exhibitions since 2021.
