Clare Samuel
Exploring the ways we are connected and divided from each other, Samuel’s work uses expanded forms of portraiture. In recent series the artist has examined the dynamics between women, and between her family and homeland of Northern Ireland. Her current project is a portrait of her relationship with her father, who lived with schizophrenia and died in 2018.
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Installation view of Us (& It) in [De] / [Re] Constructing Place at The Varley Gallery of Markham, 2021, photo by Toni Hafkensheid.
Installation view of Five on the Bed and the Little One Said from Us (& It), 2016/2020, photo by Toni Hafkensheid.
Detail from Us (& It) 2016
Video stills of Home, from Us (& It) 2020
Research image, asylum inmate, from Invention of Hysteria by Georges Didi-Huberman
Detail of Flesh / Blood / Light / Water from Us (& It) 2020
The Confucian idea that dead parents live on in the hair of their children, from Malcolm, 2022
Diary from the year before I was born, from Malcolm, 2022
Hollywell Psychiatric Hospital, from Malcolm, 2009 / 2022
Patient’s Property from Malcolm, 2022
Shell I from Malcolm, 2022
Shell II from Malcolm, 2022
After Clearing Out the Flat from Malcolm, 2022
Clare Samuel is a visual artist and writer originally from Northern Ireland, now living as a settler in Tkaronto. She holds a BFA from Toronto Metropolitan University and an MFA from Concordia University. Her work focuses on connection and distances between the self and other, as well as notions of social division, borders, and belonging. Spanning mediums such as photography, video, text and installation, her projects are often a dialogue with the idea of portraiture.
Clare has exhibited and screened internationally, most recently at OBORO, The Varley Art Gallery and Belfast Exposed. She teaches at OCADU, Toronto Metropolitan University and University of Toronto. She is a founding member and co-director of Feminist Photography Network, a nexus for research on the relationship between feminism and lens-based media.