Summer 2025
Maddie Lychek
Smoke & Mirrors, 2025
Adaptation of wheat-pasted paper mural, dimensions variable.
False acrylic nails, nail glue, oyster shell, and staples, as adapted for a wheat-pasted paper mural, dimensions variable.
Between site visits to Doon Heritage Village at Ken Seiling Waterloo Region Museum and her research in the Regional archives, artist Maddie Lychek found it challenging to find access points, artifacts and narratives that she could relate to as a queer Filipino. In composing this series, the artist recalled Alice Walker’s Everyday Use, a short story about how everyday objects are handled with a kind of preciousness that often allows them to only be seen as important within an institution's walls. Lychek took up this invitation to highlight contemporary items, false acrylic nails and an oyster shell, offering subtle suggestions of femininity and sexuality. In manipulating the objects using a scanner bed, the artist produces a series of images with an animated, ghost in the machine quality.
Adaptation of wheat-pasted paper mural, dimensions variable.
False acrylic nails, nail glue, oyster shell, and staples, as adapted for a wheat-pasted paper mural, dimensions variable.