Sara K. Maston at Daniel Faria Gallery

Artist: Sara K. Maston

Exhibition title: Coyote: Dogote

Venue: Daniel Faria Gallery, Toronto, Canada

Date: March 26 – May 7, 2022

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Daniel Faria Gallery, Toronto

Daniel Faria Gallery is pleased to present Coyote : Dogote, a solo exhibition of work by Sara K. Maston.

What is the relationship between making a painting and digging a hole? Both are slow, requiring a precise relationship between one’s body, its movements, and the material that one is shifting. Like a form of alchemy, material is changed through a slow process of handling, attention, and care, revealing something previously unseen. The objective is not to bury, but to leave things uncovered, to release something.

In Coyote : Dogote, a visitor might find themselves underground or hovering in the air, amidst the insects, animals, and micro-organisms that exist around and within human bodies. These positional shifts offer the opportunity to unlearn conventional ways of looking by interlinking human and non-human actors across different scales. It’s an unlearning that is done by both Maston and her audience, stretching far beyond the walls of her studio, unfolding still with each viewer’s experience. Influenced by Anthropologists Hi’ilei Julia Kawehipuaakahaopulani Hobart and Tamara Kneese, Maston approaches the concept of care as an affective and connective tissue between the inner self and an outer world. When mobilized, this definition of care “offers visceral, material, and emotional heft to acts of preservation that span a breadth of localities: selves, communities, and social worlds.”¹

Maston’s works often explore methods of animal communication that humans tend to overlook such as inaudible sound waves, scent, or oscillations. In Eyes that See in the Dark (2018), a human figure is rendered as though “seen” through echolocation, imagining a bat’s vision. The painting is seven feet tall and four-and-a-half feet wide. When displayed, it is propped up against the wall like a full-length mirror, inviting the viewer to adjust their perspective and enter a bat’s environment, painted from an aerial nighttime vantage point.

At times, Maston’s paintings have the appearance of veiled messages. Layers of ghostly images in colours one might find in the depths of the forest come in and out of focus. These images could be of things coming into being or leaving their last marks upon the earth. Either way, the resulting works hold a sense of transformation in their midst: becoming, dying, or the spaces at the edge of those processes. In Mother (2017-18), Maston remembers a visit to her mother’s tombstone, during which, in a trick of the light, the stone embedded in the grass became a perfect reflection of the sky. Here, the reflection becomes a surface and it also becomes a void, akin to the space formed from the absence of a person. The act of making a hole in the ground can be practical: a place to house a living animal or a place for a tree to take root. It can also be ceremonial: a place to encompass the deceased. But ceremony exists in all of those acts: in protecting, in taking root, in laying to rest.

Sara K. Maston holds an MFA from York University and is currently pursuing a degree in Information Science at the University of Toronto with a specialization in Environmental Studies that focuses on archival practice informed by the knowledge and experiences of other-than-human beings. Additionally, she performs as ‘K’ in the artist collective XVK (三喜), founded by Maston, Xuan Ye, and Veronique Sunatori. Her work has been included in exhibitions at Susan Hobbs Gallery, Toronto; Hearth, Toronto; Flux Factory, New York; Sibling Gallery, Toronto; Studio Riato, Montreal; Xpace Cultural Centre, Toronto; and the Gardiner Museum, Toronto, among others.

[1] Hobart, H. J. K., & Kneese, T. “Radical Care: Survival Strategies for Uncertain Times.” Social Text, Vol. 38, No. 1 (142), 1–16.

Sara K. Maston, Coyote: Dogote, 2022, exhibition view, Daniel Faria Gallery, Toronto

Sara K. Maston, WTM Ceremony, 2021, Oil on terraskin, maple frames, Diptych 9 1/4 x 12 inches (each)

Sara K. Maston, Swanscape, 2022, Acrylic on canvas, metal chain, 102 x 114 inches

Sara K. Maston, Coyote: Dogote, 2022, exhibition view, Daniel Faria Gallery, Toronto

Sara K. Maston, Mother, 2019, Oil on wood, Bean bun, various objects, 48 x 48 inches

Sara K. Maston, Life within Life, 2018, Oil on canvas, maple frame, 13 x 73 inches

Sara K. Maston, Simple Hole/Coyote/Crows, 2022, Sand, acrylic on canvas, plaster casts of coyote, swan, and crow feet, bittersweet vine, walnut frame, 12 x 109 x 109 inches