Frances Adair MCKENZIE

Profile

Born in 100 Mile House, Canada. Lives and works in Montreal. Graduated with a BA in Studio Arts from Concordia University in 2011.
Her work explores the morphic potential of new technologies and its cultural implications, through historical reference and experimental technique. Her practice, developed as sculpture, installation and video, creates a dialogue of shifting fluidity between technology, gesture and form.

Recent exhibitions and activities
2022 “SAT Fest 2022,” Sociète des Arts Technologique, Montreal
2022 “S.G.” Collaboration w Glor1a, Artlab, Buenos Aires
2022 “Banquet,” Afternoon Projects, Vancouver
2021 “BEDfellows,” MAXXI museum, Rome
2021 “Everything Merges, Emerges, then Fades Again,” Darling Foundry, Montreal 

Awards
2022 Innovation Prize SAT Fest
2021 Canada Arts Council Research and Creation Grant
2019-2023 Artist in residency at the Darling Foundry Montreal 

About works

Mckenzie’s practice traces historical and artistic iterations of a co-evolution between body and device. Examining ways of seeing, surveillance and desire in relation to immersive perspectives, augmentation and topographic imaginaries. Using an impoverished material language of dated technology, repurposed glass and looping sequences, within a shifting referential scenography, the work creates a cross referencing pattern connecting production, duration, desire and consumption. Combining in an abstract record of perceived temporality to form a necessary landscape: one that can be seen equally as a form of deterioration and construction. Through reflection, staging and form, the work pays tribute to the exploratory initiatives of experimental video artists while demanding recognition of formal narrativity that lives outside the concept of culture as commodity.