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Item Name: Mixed Media
Title: Death is a Natural Thing, Sweetheart
Maker: Sandra Semchuk
Year: 1994
Country: Canadian
Materials: laser transfer, grommets on canvas
Measurements: overall: 28.5 cm x 95.5 cm; overall: 117.5 cm x 96.5 cm
ID Number: PC2005.2
Legal Status: PERMANENT COLLECTION


Extended Label Info: Death is a Natural Thing, Sweetheart, suggests painful loss expressed through a series of photographs and text. This work references the actual death of Sandra Semchuk’s father, an event which fractures the artist’s recollection of him into the twelve photographic fragments displayed above the two handwritten texts. No longer a physical presence, Semchuk’s father is displaced in a collection of memories of individual gestures and images which have become abstracted through the scattering effects of time and loss. Semchuk’s skill as an artist lies in her ability to give this dissociative experience form; by combining photographs and texts, she makes her own experience of grief comprehensible to others. Sandra Semchuk was born in Saskatchewan in 1948. She received her BFA from the University of Saskatchewan in 1970. In 1983, she received a master’s degree in photography from the University of New Mexico. A founding member of the Photographers’ Gallery, Saskatoon, Semchuk also teaches at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in Vancouver. Her work has been exhibited at Presentation House Gallery, North Vancouver; Photographers’ Gallery, Saskatoon; Prince George Art Gallery; Coburg Gallery, Vancouver; Mackenzie Art Gallery, Regina; and Concordia University, Montreal.