In Phantom Limb, artist Shyra DeSouza created forms that behaved as traces of a physical body of some sort. Phantom Limb references something which is both part of us, and also separate from us, and therefore beyond our control. This is reflective of the consumer's relationship with the materials: discarded, once loved, decorative items that have lost their lustre. For this exhibition, the viewer was asked to extend the interpretation of the installation into the surrounding space, as one would when viewing dinosaur remains in a natural history museum.
DeSouza works with found objects, attaching them at points and angles to create a larger sculptural form, with the individual objects dictating how they might be manipulated within the growing structure. The effect was one that was very labyrinthine with excessive form, but no apparent function. Each item was added in such a way that they began to erase one another, and take on forms reminiscent of mounted, overgrown deer antlers, or three-dimensional Rorschach forms. Each piece was highly symmetrical, and together created distinct spinal form. This consistent element of symmetry anchored these coveted objects in the sublime, and the desire to control that which is potentially frightening, and beyond our control.
Shyra DeSouza is an interdisciplinary artist, originally from Calgary, and currently based in Berlin. She attended the Sculpture department at the Alberta College of Art & Design in Calgary, Canada, where she earned her Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts with distinction in 2006.
Her primary artistic interests lie in unravelling and reorganising the perceptions that characterise contemporary lived experience, utilising strategies and concepts such as: mimetic exacerbation, memento mori, pareidolia, ennui, and implication of the viewer to drive the development of her work. DeSouza’s practice encompasses a broad set of skills and materials, typically resulting in various forms of film, installation, and sculpture.
She has screened/exhibited her work across Canada, in the United States, and in Europe. As well as maintaining an artistic studio practice, she has undertaken several volunteer administration and board roles within the Calgary arts community, and has been awarded a number of grants and residencies.
For more information on DeSouza and her work, visit her website.
Secondhand Luster
Interpretive Essay by Emily Green
While scrolling one’s gaze along Shyra De Souza’s Phantom Limb,
one cannot help but be guided through an organically unfolding sequence of forms that appear to evolve from one to the next. This string of apparent mutations gives us a sense of a natural continuum that feels whole, like the complete spinal column of a now dead creature. Meanwhile, logic and a closer consideration of the individual forms tells us that in fact the entire piece is a construction of discrete and disparate objects from our material culture. As viewers, we can sense logic in the piece that is familiar, yet strange. This sensation is not unlike that of a phantom limb: the feeling that an appendage of the body is existent and functioning, though it is actually not.
This liminal space between knowing and not fully knowing is a highly seductive zone in the experience of art - one that De Souza invites us into through the representational power of alluring forms. They suggest meaning without precisely naming it. Mahogany cabinetry with ornate brass fittings and the glossy milk-white curves of swan necks indulge the viewer in nostalgia for fading traditions of decoration and display. One might begin to wonder who these objects belonged to, and how the narrative of their acquisition, possession and abandonment unfolded. The individual identities and memories embedded in these objects point us in multiple directions. Yet the neutrality imposed by their white-washed surface treatment and symmetrical organization points us toward a conclusion, without fully getting us there.
Without security in conceptual or metaphorical meaning to firmly sink our teeth into, we are free to indulge in an appreciation of form, which arguably holds its own sense of value and meaning. In De Souza’s work, our attention is redirected to the aesthetic potential of these once-loved objects, as well as to the experiential potential of the piece in its entirety. By orchestrating these found objects into a theatrical form that sweeps through the gallery, we are reminded of how our bodies experience the work (not just our minds). De Souza suspends us with our thoughts and our bodies in a space of personalized meaning, where we can oscillate between being mentally and emotionally critical and simply being aesthetically seduced. We swing between metaphor and pure form, and suspicion and curiosity. Ultimately, we are perhaps left thinking about our role in the cycle of material consumption.