Anna Gustafson
Love & Labour
Growing up outside of Guatemala City, during the depression, my mother Liberty never thought she would leave her country, culture and language. But she did - not once, but twice.
After she married my Swedish father Gunnar, they travelled to his country, where I was born. When asked what it was like, she told me: ”My life was turned upside down.”
Then when I was four, we took a freighter to Canada, landing in Vancouver, after three months at sea.
During all of these moves, the embroidered sampler my mother began when she was eight years old, came to be the continuity that represented ‘home’ to me.
As with all immigrant families, it is immense love and hard work that forges our family’s new lives.
Artist Statement
Using common objects I explore the intersection between the natural world, human behaviour and technology. while grounding my work with research in history, science and communication.
For the past eight years I have been enshrouding discarded small appliances and single use plastic containers in linen - just as we once prepared our dead for burial.
My artistic practice combines a spare aesthetic with a sincere use of materials and rigorous methodology to create narratives that resonate with the synergy between idea, material and technique. I choose to work with a limited palette and a restricted vocabulary of natural materials and found objects.
Background
Anna Gustafson was conceived in Guatemala to an Italian/Guatemalan mother and Swedish father, born in Sweden and raised in Vancouver, Canada. Gustafson's long view has benefited from being nurtured in a multi-cultural family within an immigrant perspective.
An important premise of her work is that we best remember information and events through our senses and associated emotions. With a strong sensory component, her work is a catalyst for deep emotion and conversation, that encourages each viewer absorb and retain their experience.
An honours graduate of Vancouver School of Art - now Emily Carr, Anna has shown in public galleries since 1974.