Hospital Hallway

Sarah Anne Johnson

Co-presented in partnership with Images Festival and Stephen Bulger Gallery

A stark continuation of her award-winning series House on Fire (2009), Winnipeg-based artist Sarah Anne Johnson returns to her maternal family’s story through a new series of performance-based video installations with a 15-channel performance installation, Hospital Hallway (2015). In the 1950s, Johnson’s grandmother was an unsuspecting participant in a CIA research program now known as Project MKultra. Seeking treatment for post-partum depression, she was subjected to a series of mind control experiments at the Allan Memorial Institute at McGill University, Montreal.

Addressing the generational trauma of these experiments within the institutional space, Johnson continues to span her artistic practice, from photography and sculpture to performance and video to further investigate and embody the difficult histories and its effects on her family. Starting this ambitious new series within the confines of an institutional space, the series moves next to the domestic realm with The Kitchen.