Role of Art, Body, Beauty to be Explored at CMU Winter Lectures

Visual Artist Erica Grimm-Vance to Speak on Reflections on Art, the Incarnation and the Way of Unknowing

Imagine two prisoners in separate jail cells. The wall between them keeps them apart. But the wall is also useful—they use it to tap out messages to each other.

That, says Erica Grimm Vance, is an apt illustration of how the material realm and our bodies paradoxically separate us from God, while at the same time being vehicles of communication with God.

“We live in an embodied reality,” says Vance, a visual artist and Assistant Professor of Art at Trinity Western University in Langley, B.C. “Everything we think, do and understand is mediated through our bodies. It is both a barrier between us and God, yet it is our only way though to God.”

Vance will speak about how her art is invested in the body, beauty, affliction and silence at the January 29-30 CMU Winter Lectures. Her topic is “Reflections on Art, the Incarnation and the Way of Unknowing.”

Grimm-Vance’s lectures will take place in CMU’s Laudamus Auditorium, 500 Shaftesbury Blvd. The first lecture is 10:30 AM, Jan. 29; the second is that evening at 7 PM. The third is 10:30 AM, Jan. 30. Click here for more information.

“We live in our bodies, and understand things through our bodies,” says Grimm-Vance, whose work has been featured in over 25 solo exhibitions around the world. “It is a gift to us, all that we are given.”

Drawing on the work of Plato, Simone Weil, Julia Kristeva and others, Grimm-Vance will explore how art can reveal the body as a bridge between people and God; how one can speak of beauty and affliction in a culture of trivialization and entertainment; and the role of silence.

“The material world is to be celebrated,” she says, at the same time acknowledging the inescapable existence of suffering. “The flip side of beauty is affliction. It is a reality in our world. But, as Simone Weil notes, both beauty and affliction are God’s way of forming our souls.”

Posted January 8, 2008.

For more information contact the CMU Communications Director, 500 Shaftesbury Blvd., Winnipeg, Manitoba R3P 2N2, telephone: 204-487-3300 ext. 630, fax: 204-889-1694,(www.cmu.ca)