In Productive Absence: Victor Cicansky’s Turn to the Domestic Julia Krueger asks if absence within the historical record can be productive? In June 2019, the retrospective exhibition Victor Cicansky: The Gardener’s Universe opened at the MacKenzie Art Gallery with over one hundred objects on display. Co-curator Julia Krueger will discuss how one particular object that was not included in the exhibition has continued to haunt her, leading her to think about Cicansky’s work in terms of 1970s home interiors and the artist’s own turn towards the domestic.

Julia Krueger is an exhibition researcher, curator, writer, instructor and lover of Prairie material culture.  Born and raised in Regina she studied art history and Canadian art history at Carleton University in Ottawa. Building on her longstanding academic interest in ceramics, in 2010, Julia completed a BFA in studio ceramics at Alberta College of Art and Design and is currently completing a PhD in Art and Visual Culture from the University of Western Ontario.  Her project, “Into the Belly of the Grasshopper as She Feasts on the Prairie Garden: an Indisciplined Examination of Fine Crafts on the Canadian Prairies, 1950 to 1980″ is nearing completion.