Building upon her previous research, Heidi is currently working on her PhD in Art and Visual Culture at the University of Western Ontario. Prior to commencing her doctorate, Heidi completed her BA (Hons) and MA in art history at York University, Toronto, where she was researching the relationship between trauma, illness and violence within psychoanalytic theory as a way in which to re-assess the aesthetic of Canadian artist John Scott (b. 1950).

Education

BAH – York University. Specializing in Art History. 2005.

MA – York University. Specializing in Art History. 2008.
Specializations: Contemporary art (installation, performance, painting, sculpture and body art), psychoanalytic theory and critical theory.

Major Research Paper: “Manifestations of Trauma in the Visual Syntax of John Scott: Violent Mark Making and the Performative Effacing of the Self.”

Research

Specializing in contemporary art, my scholarly research considers the relationship between the body and identity within visual culture. In an effort to better understand the varying impulse to alter and disrupt the performance of gender and the formation of identity vis-à-vis the surfaces of the marked body, the primary goal of my research is to consider how body modification disrupts and interrogates identity, subjectivity, representation and aesthetics. More specifically, I am concerned with the physical modification of human, animal and man-made bodies in art. My research projects reference and expand upon the genre of ‘body art’ in order to make visible the growing popularity of altered, mutilated and marked bodies in various cultures. Reengaging the living body as an art object and skin as a new artistic medium, I examine the material contexts under which bodies are physically ‘changed’ and ‘challenged’ by unconventional artistic practice, such as tattooing, cutting, marking, scarring, piercing, plastic and reconstructive surgery, as well as fashion. In relation to the study of fashion, my research has recently shifted to examine the body as a strategic site that disrupts the formation and reception of gender through dress. Considering how the body performs sexuality and difference through clothing, I am presently thinking about the relationship between bodies and violence within the historical and contemporary production of haute couture as sculptural art.

Exhibitions

Co-curator. Art of the Human Canvas. Exhibition. Museum of Canadian Contemporary Art (MOCCA), Toronto, June 2007.

Conferences and Publications

Conferences

2011 “Fashioning Flesh/Fleshing Fashion: Abjection as Feminist Strategy in Contemporary Portraiture”. Articulating Identity in Visual Culture, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas, March 4 - 5, 2011.

2009   Panel Chair, Tattoos and Tattooing I. Mid-Atlantic Popular and American Culture Association (MAPACA). Boston, Massachusetts, November 5 – 7, 2009.

2009   “Contemporary Tattoos and Graphic Design: Embodying the Popular”
Mid-Atlantic Popular and American Culture Association (MAPACA). Boston, Massachusetts, November 5 – 7, 2009.

2008   “(Re)Engagement with the Bio-Political: The Contemporary Installation Art of Santiago Sierra.”12th Annual New Frontier’s Conference in Graduate History, York University, Toronto, February 14 – 16, 2008.

2008    “The (Un)Veiled Body: Santiago Sierra’s Subversion of the Nude in Contemporary Art” Case Western Reserve University Symposium and the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio, February 28, 2008.

2007  “Santiago Sierra: the HOMO SACER and the Politics of the Other” Association of Art Historians (AAH) Graduate Summer Symposium, University of St. Andrew’s, Scotland, U.K., July 5 – 7, 2007.

Published Articles/Reviews

“Santiago Sierra: The Homo Sacer and the Politics of the Other.” Inferno: Journal of Art History, Vol.  XII (2007/08): 37- 47. “John Abrams: Cinema Vernis.” C Magazine, v. 99, Fall 2008: 40.

Teaching

VISA 2B01 - History of Modern Design. OCAD University, 2011.

VAH1052G - Art and Popular Culture. Winter, 2011 & 2012.

VISC 2B39 - Graphic Design History in the 20th Century. Ontario College of Art & Design, 2009 & 2010.