Mandy Espezel

Mandy Espezel is a Canadian artist of mixed European/settler descent, based in Sikoohkotoki/Lethbridge, Treaty 7, in the traditional territories of the Blackfoot Confederacy. They attended the University of Alberta for their BFA, where they concentrated mostly on painting and drawing, and earned an MFA from the University of Lethbridge in 2012, where they currently teach studio art as a part-time Instructor. Working within the expanded field of painting, they explore manifestations of anxiety, desire, humour and failure through material-intuitive processes. They have participated in numerous exhibitions and residencies within Canada and internationally, and have received support for their work from both the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, and the Canada Council for the Arts. Most recently, in the summer of 2024, Mandy participated in a residency with Kintai Arts in Lithuania, resulting in the group exhibition “Landscape Formations”, which is currently on touring exhibition.

Research

Based in an intuitive material studio practice, my work engages an intersectional-feminist phenomenological discourse. I am invested in the power and necessity of vulnerability. I work to confront the limits and conceptual dilemmas present within historically binary modes of representation/mimesis, while striving for corporeal embodiment. My interdisciplinary work is rooted in the realm of painting, with recent projects exploring site specific installations which incorporate individual paintings/drawings/found materials/video/performance/textile sculptural elements. The manifestation of anxieties (realized in both psychological and physiological states), empathy, sensuality, touch, and the “autobiographical” as a source of influence in interpretation and production are current thematic concerns. Subjectivity is source material, and through intensive confrontations of these categories, new possibilities for understanding unfold.