The Southern Alberta Art Gallery features new exhibits over the holiday season.
The main gallery features Sarah Anne Johnson’s exhibit “Dancing With The Doctor”— which was inspired by her grandmother’s experiences in a CIA program called MK Ultra which operated from the 50s-70s which studies altered mental states and brain function.
Johnson build a circular white room featuring video footage of the artist, wearing a mask of her grandmother's face, in a variety of frantic situations.
“ MK Ultra was about mind control,” said SAAG communications coordinator Nicole Hembroff.
“There were unethical. They were subjected to hallucinogenic drugs and sleep deprivation. And there was verbal and sexual abuse,” she continued, noting the centrepiece of the exhibit is deliberately disorientating. patrons can wander around the exhibit, or climb a set of stairs and look down at it.
“It’s a representation of part of that experiment. She’s created a life sized reproduction of the halls of the hospital which has a feeling of purgatory,” Hembroff said.
Johnson has done few other exhibits including “House on Fire”, which featured a dollhouse with a variety of different disturbing rooms including a model of the big room featured featured in “Dancing With the Doctor”
There are rats in cages, scattered on the floor and in a row entering the door in the SAAG's second ground floor gallery. In the gallery there are several of them clustered in a corner.
“It’s the experience of rats in a cellar,” Hembroff said, adding it examines people’s fear of rats. She noted the exhibit is especially interesting given the history or rats in Alberta and the provinces “ rat free status.”
“ But we also do experiments on rats because they are close to us (biologically),” she said.
“ Rats cluster in corners, so she has reflected rat clusters as well,” she continued noting she is also impressed the pieces were created from recycled fur coats.
“She used a lot of different kinds of fur, some close to rats like muskrats,” she said.
The exhibits run until Jan. 31.
