Endangered Species

Events

Rosemary Kowalsky (1920 – 2006) was a prolific Manitoba artist whose exploration of the fragility of life overlapped with her passion for gardening. This exhibition brings together Kowalsky’s work from multiple collections throughout Manitoba. Most active in the 1980s and 90s, Kowalsky inscribed a deep memory of violence into her practice, often suggesting that it was a reflection of her personal experience at the front during World War II. In her painting and installation, she strived to create a language that spoke to the conditions of fragility and trauma without glorifying or portraying violence. Through the use of repeated images of flowers and garden tools, juxtaposed against often jarring titles, Kowalsky created an iconography for these concepts that can be located within the familiar realm often associated with women’s work, while stating that dark histories are often located in the most innocuous spaces.