In this interdisciplinary exhibition, landmark Canadian artifacts from the permanent collections of the Textile Museum of Canada in Toronto are integrated with the work of contemporary Canadian artists, creating a dialogue of personal and cultural expressions across time and space. Celebrating the imagination of landscape and the human presence in and around it, Dreamland: Textiles and the Canadian Landscape introduces a seamless play of storytelling, whimsy, utility and materiality, speaking to a continuity of patterns and practices that locate the past in the present, and the present in the past.
Artists include Amalie Atkins, Douglas Coupland, John Henry Fine Day, Jérôme Fortin, Grant Heaps, Jason McLean, Graeme Patterson, Ruth Scheuing, Michael Snow and Barbara Todd. Featured textiles embody the diversity of this Canada’s social histories, regional traditions and local stories. Canadian textiles have historically taken the form of vernacular objects, such as hooked mats, pieced quilts, handmade household articles and personal objects with stories that link to specific regions, families and individuals.
Dreamland: Textiles and the Canadian Landscape is organized by the Textile Museum of Canada and curated by Shauna McCabe, Natalia Nekrassova, Sarah Quinton, and Roxane Shaughnessy.
This exhibition is made possible in part by a grant from the Ontario Arts Council’s National and International Touring program