#YEGCanvas in Their Own Words - Allison Tunis
#YEGCanvas is a luminous spot in our long #yegwinters. The transitory exhibition places exciting and diverse art images on billboards throughout the city and along the Capital & Metro LRT Lines. From now until April, we’ll share the artists’ biographies and thoughts on their artworks. Reflecting the wide diversity of art on display, the artists’ words appear unedited in all their whimsical, academic, reflective, funny, or poignant glory.
Today’s artist is Allison Tunis
Title: Pretty Please Medium: Hand Embroidery on Dyed Aida Cloth Year: 2016 Description: Pretty Please is a piece that explores themes of Body Positivity, and grapples with concepts of accepting body modifications and size diversity (especially for women) in our society.
Biography Allison Tunis holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Alberta, and a graduate diploma in Art Therapy from the Vancouver Art Therapy Institute. She works mainly in cross-stitch embroidery, but also has worked in mixed media involving acrylic painting and gel transfers, as well as self-publishing a body positive colouring book entitled Body Love: A Fat Activism Colouring Book, which can be found on Amazon in many countries.
Tunis is currently the Artist-in-Residence for Youth Empowerment and Support Services (YESS), a project supported by the Edmonton Arts Council. At YESS, Tunis works with high-risk youth in the Edmonton area to create art in a therapeutic and activist context, as well as creating her own body of work focusing on body diversity, feminism, and reducing weight-based and mental illness stigma. She has participated in the local art scene through group exhibitions such as #YEGBest_Artists, curated by the Alberta Society of Artists, in July 2017, the consumerism focused and body-conscious "The Big Idea - A Visual Exploration of Contemporary Culture and Obesity" in 2012, and has had numerous digital and print articles written about her work over the last ten years.
Artist Statement
Allison Tunis' embroidery and mixed media pieces focus on our obsession with body image, traditional Western social aesthetics, and the conscious and unconscious desire to be considered desirable. These works develop a discourse around cultural conditioning and societal implications of restrictive standards of beauty.
Tunis’ works feature portraits of persons who shun outdated and constricting notions of what it means to be a “beautiful woman”, and who celebrate their differences and diversity in ways that can be considered disobedient, either actively or passively. The need to feel beautiful and desired is universal, but the standards for how to achieve that are so restrictive that it leaves little chance for many to accomplish this feat.
The technique of cross-stitch emphasizes the obsessive quality of the work, while reinforcing the concept of cultural stereotypes of femininity. Through hours and hours of time working stitch by stitch, the artist creates an image of contemporary, diverse beauty and sexuality using only needle, thread and fabric. As well, concepts of "women's work" and femininity are evoked through the history of embroidery and textile work, further stereotypes of what a woman is traditionally expected to be by society.
