AMALIE ATKINS INTERVIEW WITH CBC RADIO 1

CBC RADIO 1 INTERVIEW WITH AMALIE ATKINS REGARDING HER WUNDERMARCHEN EXHIBIT AT CENTRAL ART GARAGE.

Amalie Atkins' "Wundermarchen" interview with Alan Neal.

For the next six weeks, Amalie Atkins' colourful photography will decorate the walls of the Central Art Garage. The artist, along with curator Leah Taylor, talk about some of the surreal characters found in Amalie's "wonder tales."

Wundermärchen brings together a series of photographic stills from Amalie Atkins’ ongoing body of films titled, we live on the edge of disaster and imagine we are in a musical. This exhibition provides glimpses into Atkins’ secret, fictional world that is fluid in both time and space, a world created by reconstructing, altering and exaggerating autobiographical events until they take the shape of Wundermärchens. A German term, Wundermärchen translates to “wonder tale.” Wundermärchen was “adopted by the Romantics in Germany and the Russian folklorists to characterise the folk tale or fairy tale.”

Using a large format field camera, Atkins captured both staged and spontaneous moments from the film sets, allowing for liminal spaces or meta-narratives to organically develop from her original script. Each photograph contains two distinct elements: raw prairie landscape, and brightly uniformed characters, coalescing to reveal complex issues of the human condition such as survival, strength, loss, anxiety and resistance.

With an all-female cast of characters, Atkins’ nonlinear, intertwining storylines investigate memories, matriarchy, history, folklore and family. From the roller skating army of Valkyries and the Two-Headed Sister, to stoic Aunt Agatha, sisterhood emanates from every image. The oral histories passed down from Atkins’ mother, grandmother and great-grandmother are integral to her narratives. 

Wundermärchen explores Atkins continuum of interpretations created from her familial stories, linking the present to the past.

Leah Taylor, Curator

Wundermarchen Exhibition page

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