Sylvia Ptak

Fairy Tails

Fairy Tails was a group exhibition curated by Anne Koval. The exhibition first began at the Owens Art Gallery, Mount Allison University, Sackville, New Brunswick in January, 2020 until March, 2020 and then travelled to the Confederation Centre of the Arts in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island in December, 2021 until March, 2022. A catalogue accompanied the exhibition.

The works in this exhibition present fantastical narratives in which animals preside over strange episodes: tales are rewritten or unwritten, travellers embark on uncertain journeys, danger lurks deep in the forest, a witch appears from nowhere, birds and beasts are spellbound, clothing is enchanted, and a shoe materializes, as if magically spun from gold. If animals are “good to think with,” as anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss once famously remarked, then folk and fairy tales have a long history of speaking through beasts, whose otherworldly transformations can express our innate or unconscious desires.

Participating Artists: Amalie Atkins, Matt Brown, Aganetha Dyck, Meryl McMaster, Sylvia Ptak, Vicky Sabourin, Diana Thorneycroft, Anna Torma, Laura Vickerson, Janice Wright Cheney