TAKASHI HILFERINK
PAINTING/DRAWING STATEMENT
Civility, family, abjection and questions of safety and security enter into narrative depictions in which critically surreal elements ride beneath an initial appearance of Canadian domestic life. My images are often sourced from experiences of abandoned tales, objects or vintage news photography (LIFE, National Geographic, Post, etc.). These sources are then reinterpreted into contemporary stories and realities which I see misconstrued or altogether neglected. Divested of its original context (a 60s lifestyle magazine, a family photo album, a scholarly article) and rendered anew, the source takes on new meanings and challenges dominant fictions. Pets (particularly dogs) sometimes appear in my work; I believe domestic pets’ experiences of our culture mirror our own. Often, other creatures appear in order to take the narrative beyond the anthropocentric. The tenuous divide between human and non-human and the concept of “humanness” often come into question in my work.
Born in Ottawa, Ontario 1985. I am a Japanese-Dutch-American-Canadian and none of my friends make more than $30,000 a year. I have been making art since a time before I can remember and I graduated from York University in 2008 with a BFA with Honours. My only dependent is a cat.