A member of the collectives Spontaneous Combustion (Toronto) and Venus Fly Trap (Montreal), I teach the courses Women and the Fine Arts, as well as lithography, and the graduate seminar in printmaking at Concordia University. The boundary between care of the self and self-inflicted pain (par abrasion), marking, mortality and depression (melancholia & melanomata), and the narrative of analytic sessions (Transference-Love) are at issue in my installations. Recent exhibitions include Les Occupantes, an exhibition of installations in a Montreal partment (organized by the Venus Fly Trap Collective, 1996), m melanomata & melancholia, print/installation and artist's book, galerie Optica, Montreal (1996), Drawings and maquettes by sculptors, Galerie Samuel Lallouz, Montreal (1996), and Rx: Taking Our Medicine, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, Ontario (1995).__________Barbara McGill Balfour
Balfour's book Selfish brings together diverse “self-portraits” that humorously reflect upon the enigma of identity. Representations of the artist in the guise of her favorite television characters, in action figures created in her own likeness, in Silly Putty body impressions and in a fingerprint installation suggest the impossibility of defining a fixed sense of self. Identity is in continuous flux.
$ 350