REVEAL

PROJECT

My mother wore her heart on her sleeve

Informed by such diverse sources as the still controversial xenotransplant of a baboon heart into the infant, ‘Baby Fae’ (1984) and the imagined futuristic writings of H. G. Wells, ‘My mother wore her heart on her sleeve’ is also a personal narrative.

This photo-based work, a snapshot of my mother enlarged to life-size, creates an intimacy with the viewer. The negative image of my mother’s head is replicated and modified to resemble an enlarged heart, her face reflected in this secondary, archetypal organ. Normally hidden within the thoracic cavity, the heart is revealed, floating on my mother’s chest, exposed. Vulnerable.

A ubiquitous sewing basket, seemingly lit from within, stands in for an organ cooler used for transport, the arteries and veins still attached to a life force. Because the heart is thought to rest at the core of human selfhood, heart transplant patients not only take on a hybrid body but a hybrid mind. Notions of embodiment, kinship and identity play out, as my mother is both donor and recipient. My intention is to open a dialogue of the phenomenological, emotional and cultural impacts of organ transplants. The gift of life for one is the loss of life, the absence, for another. Heatless. Heartache. Heartfelt.

ARTIST

Fae Logie

Fae Logie is a Canadian artist whose practise operates within the registers of the scientific and the poetic, the conceptual and environmental. Embracing elements of sculpture, drawing and photography, she examines alternative ways of knowing our environment – be that wilderness or urban settings, human and non-human. Interested in making correspondences between local and distant landscapes, Logie has exhibited across Canada and participated in international artist residencies and shows in Iceland, UK, New Zealand and Norway. She has an MFA degree from the University of British Columbia, though initially, she studied science, a discipline that continues to inform her work.