MARINA ROY
One Hundred Years Later, 2012
animation
sound by Graham Meisner
19:19
465 Victoria Street
In the context of the global pandemic, our bodies and the environment have become dominant sites of conflict and anxiety. Expansive globalized travel and the exploitation of nature for human needs are contributing factors to the widespread nature of the pandemic. Marina Roy’s One Hundred Years Later offers space for considering this present condition and futurities. Using altered ukiyoe prints as backdrops, her animation was made in the wake of the Tohoku earthquake in 2011. Ukiyo-e translates as “pictures of the floating world” and designates an artistic genre in Japan popular from the 17th to the 19th century. The early 17th century was a time when Edo (now Tokyo) experienced rapid economic growth, and merchant classes sought entertainment, including affordable ukiyo-e prints. In One Hundred Years Later, a series of vignettes depict scenes of public and private life being overtaken by shapeshifting monsters and animistic forces (yokai). In the animation, these supernatural beings seem to appear as harbingers of dangers associated with unimpeded human extraction and overconsumption of resources. Flows of oil paint on water punctuate the animation, potentially pointing to new forms of becoming.
Marina Roy contends, “In the pile-up of language, spectacle, and garbage, which constitutes our amnesiac present, one role for art is to create a clearing within this petrified landscape, and, through a reordering all this new and obsolete stuff, through bricolage and play, construct new meanings, new conceptions of reality, shot through with historical memory.” Her work is cross-disciplinary in scope, investigating the intersection between materials, history, language and ideology. Utilizing the grotesque as a material strategy, Roy’s work addresses the need for a post-human/non-human perspective, counter to the reigning tendencies toward human-centric hubris. Humour is explored through a corporeal register: humans’ underlying animal nature and mortality, as well as the absurdity of humanist moral positions visàvis life on this planet.
Marina Roy is Vancouver-based artist and writer whose work explores the intersection between language and visual art. She received A Bachelor of Arts in French Literature at Université Laval, Québec City, Québec, a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax, Nova Scotia, and a Masters of Fine Arts from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC. She has shown nationally and internationally, including the Vancouver Art Gallery and Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver, BC; the Or Gallery Berlin, Berlin, Germany; Gallery Sumukha, Chennai & Bengaluru, India; and Chisenhale Gallery, London, UK. Roy was recipient of the VIVA award in 2010. In 2001 she published sign after the x (Artspeak/Arsenal Pulp Press), a book that revolves around the letter X and its multiple meanings. She is currently working on the next book, titled Queuejumping. She is Associate Professor of Visual Art at the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC.
Marina Roy
One Hundred Years Later, 2012
animation
courtesy of the Artist
Photos: Frank Luca