May 12 – June 9, 2023

Ana Paula Villenueva

In the abyss I look for entropy and you are there is an ode to the process of grief. My ever-shifting relationship with the inevitable has guided this work through its repetitive and seemingly futile acts as a reflection of change. Through repetitive acts of creation, I navigate and process the recent loss of a loved one using duplication as a tool for grounding. Borrowing absurdist themes from sci-fi novels such as The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, I am able to gently explore the inevitability of death and its implications within my understanding of chaos and being.

Ana Paula Villanueva is Mexican-Canadian visual artist based in Moh’kins’tsis, Treaty 7 Territory. Themes such as displacement, alienation, loss, grief, and challenges with mental illness are investigated through the lens of her nuanced identity residing in the body of an immigrant woman. Inspired by underground comics, these experiences are portrayed through the creation of large-scale two-dimensional illustrative characters and letters that live in a three-dimensional world. In 2020, Ana Paula graduated from the Alberta University of Arts with a BFA in media arts and is currently completing a BSc in Biology degree at the University of Calgary.