Biography

Julia Feyrer (b. 1982, Lkwungen Territory, Canada; lives/works: unceded lands of the Tsleil-Waututh, Skxwú7mesh and Musqueam) roots their practice in a material engagement with celluloid filmmaking and sculpture, with emphasis on the body’s relationship to these media. They conceive of the camera as a bodily extension of the human sensorium—a device through which one can feel time and perception, and thereby aid or alter one’s experience of the world. Feyrer has an interest in herbals, which relates to this experimentation in aiding and altering perception. In their approach to sculpture, they incorporates material and objects from home and studio into cast objects and installations—from brushes and moulds to mirrors, coins, and herbal remedies. Feyrer often links their film to their sculptures, by positioning the gallery installation as film set; this method also creates overlaps from one project to the next. In their film Escape Scenes (2014), Feyrer takes a classic cinematic set up of a driving scene and inserts various sculptural, humorous structures to act as filters or screens that obscure the view through the car’s back window. As the artist drives through the city, the objects in the rearview change, and the speed of the vehicle and the wind alter their forms. The camera flattens these installations from three-dimensional, static objects into moving images, literally and figuratively, which live in a virtual timeline.

Feyrer graduated with a Meisterschülerin from the Städelschule in Frankfurt, Germany in 2010, and received a Bachelor of Media Arts, Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in 2004. They have held solo exhibitions at Daziabo, Montreal (2010); Catriona Jeffries, Vancouver (2018); POTTS, Los Angeles (2017); Western Front, Vancouver (2014); Catriona Jeffries, Vancouver (2012); and Artspeak, Vancouver (2010). Their work has been included in group exhibitions at the Vancouver Art Gallery (2017, 2016); the Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton (2013); and Presentation House Gallery, North Vancouver (2012). In collaboration with artist Tamara Henderson, Feyrer has presented exhibitions at Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm (2016); Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver (2016); Institute of Contemporary Art Philadelphia (2015); and Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff (2013).