CONSTRUCTING A PLACE OF BELONGING
By
Galia Kwetny
BFA University of Alberta, 2009
THE THESIS ESSAY SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE
REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
MASTER OF APPLIED ARTS
in
Low Residency Program
EMILY CARR UNIVERSITY OF ART + DESIGN
2012

© Galia Kwetny, 2012

ii

ABSTRACT
This thesis examines the ways displacement is reflected in artistic practices dealing with land,
landscape and geography. Land is addressed here as context for histories of displaced persons
and it is assumed that connection with the environment affects the human sense of belonging.
The theories presented in this essay contextualize practices that turn to subjects of land and
displacement approaching them in the light of embodied1 cognition. By investigating emergent
and alternative patterns of agency that these theories offer, I trace a current epistemological shift
described by a curator and theorist Irit Rogoff which resituates a theory of cognition within lived
experience. This shift is important for considering the phenomenon of re-building a ―sense of
place‖2 after the rupture of displacement - as a process of identity and knowledge formation. My
research views painting as a practice of agency in examining the experience of concrete subjects
rather than seeking formal, transcendental conditions of subjectivity. Employing a theory of
embodied cognition I approach the matter of land as place and abstracted landscape painting as
an artistic practice and an attempt to actively re-build my own sense of belonging.
Through a better understanding of the mechanisms involved in the ―representational events‖3
of similar practices it is my intention to create a context for my own practice of painting. Work
of Ana Mendieta, Julie Mehretu, Huma Bhabha, Joshua Neustein, and Anselm Kiefer is
referenced in this paper for evidence of how living away from one‘s home country or
questioning its history is reflected in artists‘ work. I test the potential of embodiment theory and
terminology application within the realm of these practices.
As an immigrant I had to forge a new identity in adopted environment. In this thesis I intend
to elevate the subject of displacement and migration from the matter of universal empathy to the

iii

level of identity and knowledge formation. I examine stages in my own new identity
development from the rupture of displacement to the awareness of being defined by several
cultures. I register how different cultural ways of seeing overlap and influence each other in my
work.

iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT................................................................................................................................ii-iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS............................................................................................................v-vi
LIST OF FIGURES.......................................................................................................................vii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS..........................................................................................................viii
DEDICATION................................................................................................................................ix
GLOSSARY OF KEY TERMS..................................................................................................x-xi
IMAGE OF WORK.......................................................................................................................xii
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
RATIONALE, RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND METHODOLOGY...........................................5
1

CHAPTER 1 Situated Practice............................................................................................6
1.1 Theoretical Contextualization: Geography of Human Experience....................6
1.2 Art Historical Contextualization......................................................................15

2

CHAPTER 2 Constructing a Place of Belonging..............................................................22
2.1 Analysis of Related Artistic Practices..............................................................22
2.2 Painting: Contemporary Condition..................................................................29
2.3 Embodiment and Spatial Synchronicity...........................................................33

CONCLUSION .............................................................................................................................39

v

ENDNOTES..................................................................................................................................41
BIBLIOGRAPHY.........................................................................................................................44

vi

LIST OF FIGURES
1. Galia Kwetny, In Formation (Sheltered Series), 03/2012. Gouache, synthetic polymer,
and oil on canvas, 72‖x90‖................................................................................................xii
2. Galia Kwetny, Soil Matters, 10/2011. Gouache, synthetic polymer, and oil on canvas,
65‖x110‖............................................................................................................................12
3. Galia Kwetny, Ungoogled Earth, 11/2011. Gouache, synthetic polymer, and oil on
canvas, 60‖x92‖……………………………………………………………………….…13
4. Galia Kwetny, Promised, 04/2011. Gouache, synthetic polymer, and oil on canvas
69‖x104‖…………………………………………………………………………………19
5. Galia Kwetny, Duomo, 05/2011, gouache, synthetic polymer, and oil on canvas, 85‖x85‖
……………………………………………………………………………………………20
6. Joshua Neustein, How History Became Geography, 1990. Wood podium, hand-painted
map, cut glass, and crystal chandelier, 210‖x100‖x100‖..................................................23
7. Huma Bhabha, Red Desert, 2010. Ink on photographic print, 60‖x94‖............................24
8. Galia Kwetny, In Formation (Sheltered Series), 03/2012. Gouache, synthetic polymer,
and oil on canvas, 72‖x90‖................................................................................................34
9. Galia Kwetny, Qumran, 04/2012. Gouache, synthetic polymer, and oil on canvas,
72‖x90‖..............................................................................................................................36
10. Galia Kwetny, Community, 06/2012. Gouache, synthetic polymer, and oil on canvas,
65‖x120‖ ………………………………………………………………………………...37

vii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to acknowledge and extend my heartfelt gratitude to the following persons who have
made the completion of this thesis possible:

My Supervisor Professor Landon Mackenzie for the support, inspiration, and guidance she
offered me throughout the time of this program.

Dr. Chris Jones, Coordinator of Low Residency Master of Applied Arts Program and the
Assistant Dean of Graduate Studies for directing my first steps in research for this thesis and
encouraging my learning.

My External Examiner Professor Paul Hess, the Director of the Art School of Manitoba for the
great discussions at the defence meeting and his indispensible suggestions for my thesis.

Professor Dr. Randy Lee Cutler for introducing me to resources vital to the subject of my
research.

Professor Elizabeth McIntosh for her valuable suggestions for improving this paper.

Kristina Lee Podesva for enlightening my practice and my writing.

Dr. Catherina Pizanias for support of my painting and guidance through feminist writings
relevant to this research.

viii

DEDICATION
To my husband Igor Kwetny who has supported me throughout this journey.

ix

GLOSSARY OF KEY TERMS
Aboutness - relationship between a living thing and its environment (See endnote #4). This
phenomenon includes everything the organism is, everything that fits it to live in its world
Base-level schemas – dynamic somato-sensory maps derived from the body and embodied
interaction with the world (See endnote #6)
Conceptual metaphor – encompasses similes, analogies, and metaphors in a more traditional
sense. Using a structure from a concrete domain in order to understand and talk about an abstract
structure. Conceptual metaphors are fundamental for our reasoning about ourselves and the
world
Counter-cartography – acts of mapping and re-mapping in artistic practices
Displacement – a physical and emotional state after leaving one‘s homeland
Embodied cognition – a theory that breaches the dualist mind/body divide and constructs wholebodied persons as knowledge
Embodiment – a theory that puts an emphasis on understanding human life as the life of a
physical body
Epistemological shift – embodied cognition theory grants an interpretative authority of lived
experience to actual subjects and not to an ‗objective‘ system of knowledge. In this light concrete
individuals contribute to knowledge formation
Half-ascribing – seeing ‗as-if‘. Voluntary ascribing of qualities to an object that does not or
cannot have them (see ‗voluntary synaesthesia‘)
Living-on-a-hyphen – living in a hybrid culture or being defined by two or more cultures

x

Metaphor – linking of otherwise apparently unrelated concepts. In embodied cognition theory it
is more than a fixed linguistic convention. Metaphors are ‗surface‘ manifestations of deeper,
active, and largely unconscious conceptual structures
Multicenteredness - a result of living in a ‗hybrid culture‘ or being defined by two or more
worlds (See endnote #8)
Non-dualistic approach – an embodied approach to human-level truth for which mind is the
body and the body is the mind
Representation – (here) is not synonymous to cognition. It is a collection of social practices by
which cognitive beings regulate each other's structural aboutness. Representation is inherently
social (See endnote #3)
Rupture – (of displacement) a trauma of being taken or torn out of a familiar environment
Spatial synchronicity – experiencing of two or more places as blended in one
Synaesthesia – involves an unusual blending of two or more senses. It is a systematic but
perceptually irrelevant co-activation of different neurological centers
Voluntary Synaesthesia – voluntary ascribing of certain qualities to an object that does not or
cannot have these qualities

xi

Fig.1: Galia Kwetny, In Formation (Sheltered Series), 03/2012. Gouache, synthetic polymer, and oil on canvas,
72‖x90

xii

INTRODUCTION
My research focuses on human connection with the environment as it is reflected in artistic
practices that deal with land, displacement, and geography. I believe that land can be viewed as
context for creating new histories of displaced persons and that stronger ties with the
environment help restore immigrants‘ sense of belonging. The meaning of land as a place which
one can belong to grows manifold when you leave your home country. To forge new identities
that are tuned into an adopted environment immigrants have to acquire new knowledge. Old
connections and patterns that made people fit into their original place have to be re-structured.
Emergence of new bonds with the surroundings helps re-build a sense of place. Awareness of
one‘s own active role in this process eases the pain of displacement and speeds the adjustment to
a new culture.
Theories I reference in this thesis contextualize artistic practices that turn to subjects of land
and being or feeling displaced - approaching them in the light of embodied cognition1. Embodied
cognition theory views whole-bodied persons as loci of knowledge formation. By investigating
emergent and alternative patterns of agency, I trace a current epistemological shift as described
by a curator and theorist Irit Rogoff which resituates a theory of cognition within lived
experience. This shift is important for considering the phenomenon of re-building a sense of
place and belonging after leaving a homeland - as a process of identity and knowledge formation.
Employing theories of embodied cognition offered by Canadian scholars Ellie Epp and Edward
Singerland I approach the subjects of land as place and landscape as a painting practice situated
within my research.

1

While recognizing that embodiment theory and terminology comes from neuroscience and
philosophy, I explore possibilities of their application in visual arts. Following the demands of
my research I reference insights into the changes occurring in the embodied mind of displaced
persons.

Leaving the land... I have done that twice. The first time I left Soviet Union for Israel and
then, eleven years later I immigrated to Canada. I remember several stages in my first
immigration. I recall fear of the unknown while leaving the USSR as a young mother: we were
denied our Soviet citizenship and had officially no country to belong to. Then, there was a
tremendous hope for a re-union with the historic Jewish homeland. It was mixed with anxiety:
raised as atheists we could not be a perfect fit in a state where religion is a big part of education
and politics. It was followed by a strong cultural shock and realization that everything around
was unfamiliar: new geography, extreme desert climate, tiny size of the country. I could see
some of the borders from the place where we lived. We moved from a vast country with severe
restrictions of freedoms to a freer country with borders within half-an-hour reach. During the
first years I had to get used to daily shelling at the Northern border which was just five
kilometres away. The value of land as a place to belong to became very real for me. I hiked in
the Judean and Negev Desert and in the Golan Heights with my high-school students. I felt Israel
was my land. Leaving it was very painful, but staying in the country, torn by terror was even
harder. I wish I could say that leaving Israel was not my choice. I question it in my art by
repeatedly turning to the subject of Israeli geography and landscape.

Another important stage in the process of being adjusted to a new country is withdrawal into
one‘s culture of origin. It can immediately follow the ―shock‖ stage; it can also be a point of no

2

return in somebody‘s history of migration (Alba and Nee, 139). In my experience it has been a
re-current event. Every time I feel uncertain about my future I find new sources of energy and
inspiration in Israeli culture, in my memories of that land, in speaking Hebrew. At those
moments I conceive of paintings that for me are connected to Israel‘s history and geography (See
Promised, Fig 4, p 19 and Qumran, Fig 9, p 36). I never feel the need to withdraw into my
Russian heritage, but Russian has always stayed the language I speak at home. I speak Russian to
my husband, Hebrew to my children, and English to my friends. Sometimes it feels as if I live in
three worlds simultaneously. Do I belong to any of them? In this paper I offer my own insights
into what might contribute to re-building a sense of belonging for a displaced person. It could be
that recognizing traces of similarities between different places and thus bridging the gap between
them - is one of the most fundamental conditions for successful adaptation of an immigrant.
Re-inventing new sense of place and ―aboutness‖4 – adjustment to the environment (a term
introduced by Ellie Epp) - results in reconstruction of metaphors that we think with. Ellie Epp
defines aboutness as engagedness between a living thing and its environment. In her dissertation
paper Being About: Perceiving, Imagining, Representing, Thinking she admits that this term
―acknowledges that we are not in a position to be very exact but we want to ground our thinking
about cognition in the understanding that it is accomplished by spatiotemporal means, by bodies.
Doing so, we can include perception and action in what we mean by knowing, because they are
forms of successful contact with things in the world‖, (Chapter 1, Intrinsic Aboutness).

Re-gaining a sense of belonging requires constructing of new contexts for individuals
and their histories. Displaced artists may address this when they create imaginary or abstracted
landscapes or when they turn to mapping, re-mapping, and body-in-place subjects. Examples of

3

several artistic practices are referenced here in their relation to the subject of my research. Is
geography a language in crisis for artists who feel excluded? Most artists whose work is featured
in this paper are people living ―on-a-hyphen‖ – with identities defined by more than one culture
e.g., Polish-Israeli-American, Pakistani-American, or Cuban-American. As a Russian-IsraeliCanadian myself, I find it helpful to look for inspiration and possible answers in the art of other
immigrants.

In this thesis I examine painting in its agency and direct access to the lived experience of a
subject. I investigate how the phenomenon of spatial synchronicity is connected to embodiment
in my practice. Viewing painting as an act of embodied mind allows it to be explored as
instrumental in bearing witness to displacement in one‘s personal history.

4

RATIONALE, RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND METHODOLOGY

My chosen medium is painting. As an immigrant I use expressive means available to me to seek
a sense of place. As a displaced person I retain an emotional connection to the places left behind;
the resonance of the original places is enhanced and intensified by distance. This connection is
reflected in painting large-scale imaginary landscapes that for me combine features of my new
adopted place and the lands I left. Very often the original and the adopted places interact and
result in artwork that visually highlights similarities between both.

Can painting bear witness to cultural displacement in its vision of adopted places and
homelands left behind? My practice explores this potential through combined means of
abstraction, representation, and elements of cartography in painting. Painting is being examined
here in its direct access to my lived experience. How are different stages of re-building a sense of
place manifested in an artist‘s work? How do they show in my work? I register changes in my
practice of painting abstracted landscapes happening over a period of time. These changes often
coincide with and are emblematic of different stages in my adjustment to a new environment.
Are there any similarities in practices of displaced artists that engage with issues of place and
identity? Through linking my own experience to histories of other immigrant artists I trace
commonalities in how displacement as a phenomenon of the contemporary world is reflected in
artistic practices similar to my own.

Thinking about several lands at the same time while making my art I hope to convey a
message of spatial synchronicity. Creating body-sized imaginary space in which the left behind
and an adopted place interact allows me to build my own shelter between cultures, a combined
place of experience that I can call my own.
5

CHAPTER 1 SITUATED PRACTICE
1.1 Theoretical Contextualization: Geography of Human Experience
By breaching the mind-body divide and approaching an embodied mind as always in touch with
the world, neuroscience offers us a clearer view of human perception than a traditional model of
inner representations-formation and their ‗storage‘ in particular parts of human bodies. I believe
that this understanding of the mechanism of human perception is beneficial for viewing painting
in general as a medium with a direct access to individual experience. It has even greater
significance for imaginative or constructed landscape painting as I assume here that layers of
different cultural experiences might be registered in rendering landscape in painting. In the
absence of an ‗Absolute Observer‘ (Merleau-Ponty, The World of Perception, 41), or a ‗Ghost in
the Machine‘ (Singerland, What Science Offers the Humanities, 3), we might want to explore
similarities found in individual practices as actually ―reflecting contemporary conditions‖ (Irit
Rogoff, Terra Infirma, 74). For accomplishing this task we will need a closer look at the loci of
individual experience and knowledge formation: the spatiotemporal means – the bodies.
In light of recent achievements in neuroscience and philosophy of neuroscience, this thesis
views a ―theory of representation as implied within a general theory of cognition but not the
theory of cognition as implied within a theory of representation‖5 (Epp, Chapter 6). There are no
representations of external reality stored in human brain. In this thesis perception is viewed as a
relation between a whole-bodied organism and its environment and cannot be localized to the
brain. Knowledge acquisition happens through sequences of pattern-like, re-linkable connections
between whole-bodied persons and their environment.

6

As the embodied approach to perception holds, our whole bodies are oriented and structurally
responsive to their environments and whole persons refer to and are about things in those
environments. Perception, as University of British Columbia Canada Research Chair in Chinese
Thought and Embodied Cognition Edward Singerland argues is not concerned primarily with
representation, but with action. He comes to the conclusion that ―Concepts are therefore not
amodal, abstract, and propositional, but perception- and body-based (sic)‖ (34). Meeting his
views from the other side, contemporary scientists describe base-level spatial schemas6 –
recurring patterns arising from our sensory-motor interactions with the world - as sources of
logics used abstractly. Their argument is that a non-propositional, analogue, embodied structure the schema - is the fundamental unit of meaning.
The first philosopher who wrote about painting as an act of embodied mind was Maurice
Merleau-Ponty (1908 – 1961). In ―Eye and Mind‖(1961) he posed a question of a painter‘s
intention in the following way: ―… incontestably sovereign in his rumination of the world,
possessed of no other ―technique‖ than the skill his eyes and hands discover in seeing and
painting, he gives himself entirely to drawing from the world… What, then, is the secret science
which he has or which he seeks?‖ (32). Merleau-Ponty believed that a painter ―takes his body
with him‖, that it is by lending his body to the world he ―changes the world into paintings‖ (32).
In his opinion a painter‘s world is nothing but visible no matter if he paints from nature – he
paints because he has seen; because the world at least once ―emblazoned in him the ciphers of
the visible‖ (35). He explained that it is impossible to say where nature ends and the human
being or expression begins, and this is also the reason why ―the dilemma between figurative and
non figurative art is wrongly posed‖ (48). A non-dualistic approach to art that Merleau-Ponty
advocates questions the possibility of assigning to any genre either connection with disembodied
7

Reason or with the burdensome Matter7. Moreover, by allowing an integration of data and
theories between humanities and natural sciences, this approach can grant an access to an
intellectual pool of shared knowledge. This integration can provide a better understanding of an
embodied mind‘s connection to its environment.
Merleau-Ponty provided an insight into the developments in landscape painting possibly
initiated by German painter Caspar David Friedrich (1774 - 1840) who sought to covey a
subjective, emotional response to the natural world. The Romantic landscapes and seascapes of
Caspar David Friedrich were open to different interpretations by viewers. Merleau-Ponty
elaborated on the subject of connection between human beings and their environment and its
reflection in landscape painting in his series of lectures The World of Perception (1948). He
presented an idea of perceiving a landscape as opposed to conventional arrangement of a
traditional landscape painting. He offered a different vision of space in a landscape painting –
one that emerges over time; space which is ―no longer a medium of simultaneous objects …
apprehended by an absolute observer‖ (41). He proclaimed that ―the space of modern painting is
space… in which we too are located… and with which we are organically connected‖ (41). (In
his lecture delivered in 1948 the word ―modern‖ should be understood as ―contemporary‖ to that
time.)
Human organic connection to the environment was examined in the phenomenological
investigations of another French philosopher Gaston Bachelard (1884-1962). In 1958 he
published The Poetics of Space in which he elaborated on the subject. I see three aspects of
space/land representation that were addressed in his writing as related to my research: First,
Bachelard believed that ―space, vast space, is the friend of being‖(208), - this thought echoes my
theme of connection between individuals and their environment.
8

Second, this author opined that ―Elsewhere and formerly are stronger than the hic et nunc.
The being-here is maintained by a being from elsewhere…‖ (208) Original ties with the
environment that any being develops to fit into it form a strong basis for any future changed
patterns in case a person moves away. These original ties will always determine the later
developed ones. They will serve as a background for any transformations and changes that
people undergo in their lifetime. This consideration led me to the idea of spatial synchronicity –
a feeling that you are in more than one place at the same time - as something displaced persons
can experience while thinking about their experience. Lucy Lippard - a writer, activist and
curator, describes a similar phenomenon as ―multicenteredness‖8 – being defined by more than
one world or culture; having many centers.
Third, Bachelard named ―great, lasting realities and fundamental, material images‖ as the
basis of all imagination: ―…nothing in other words, that is either chimerical or illusory‖ (207) this view is favorable for imaginative painting or creating imaginary landscapes. In my opinion,
Bachelard foresaw the future developments in cognitive psychology and neuroscience that prove
that thinking, imagining, remembering, comparing – are equally valuable cognitive functions.
They are all culturally developed variants of base level schemas (See Endnote #6).
Quest of bridging the mind-body divide in humanities departments continues into the twentyfirst century. Edward Singerland in his book What Science Offers the Humanities, 2008, insists
that though embodiment as a non-dualistic approach to a person promises no privileged access to
objective truths, it can result in a stable body of shared knowledge, verified by proofs based on
common perceptual access. He argues for an integrated, ―embodied‖ approach to the study of
human culture. This approach to human cognition will help challenge such dogmas as ―blank
slate‖ theory of human nature, strong versions of social constructivism, linguistic determinism,
9

and the ideal of disembodied Reason. For building his argument Singerland summons research
findings of recent movements in the study of perception, AI, psychology, cognitive science,
linguistics, and behavioural neuroscience. This evidence brings him to the conclusion that
perception is not simply passive representation of the external world inside the individual‘s head,
but inextricably bound up with embodied action in the world.
To elaborate on the structure of human cognition Singerland employs a concept of ―voluntary
synaesthesia‖9 for metaphor, analogy, and metaphoric blends. Voluntary synaesthesia is an act of
knowingly ascribing qualities to an object that does not or cannot possess them. For example,
trunks of centuries-old olive trees that grow in Israel always reminded me of old human limbs
twisted by arthritis. Describing those trees as having ―arthritis-twisted limbs‖ and implying that
they are ―in pain‖- would be a case of invoking of voluntary synaesthesia. According to Edward
Singerland humans became capable of voluntary synaesthesia between sixty and thirty thousand
years ago. He believes that as a result of one or a short series of mutations that happened at that
time to human brain, Homo sapiens acquired what he calls ‗cognitive fluidity‘ (20) that allowed
information to flow freely between different cognitive modules or cognitive centers of the brain.
This dramatic change helped Homo sapiens to spread and thrive around the globe. (At
approximately the same time the first known artefacts – figurines and cave-paintings - appeared.)
Ability to connect distant concepts helped humans adjust to new and changing conditions on
Earth from then on. This theory is called conceptual metaphor theory. It argues that analogue
image schemas derived from the body and embodied interaction with the environment serve as
primary tools for our reasoning about ourselves and the world, especially about relatively
abstract or unstructured domains. Singerland insists that all cognitive and cultural innovation
human beings are capable of has to be seen as ultimately grounded in and constrained by the
10

structure of our body-minds. It is plausible that the same mechanisms are at work in our
embodied mind when we are withdrawn from our original environment and have to survive and
succeed in a new one. We rely on our old metaphors we think with, re-structuring, improving,
and embellishing them to fit into the changed conditions. The degree of re-construction required
in each particular case depends on the difference between the new and the old environments.
Building a body-based philosophical platform for artists‘ work is an imperative for a
Canadian scholar and artist Ellie Epp. In her PhD dissertation paper Being About: Perceiving,
Imagining, Representing, Thinking (2002) she investigates ways in which artists know and come
to know. The central concept of Epp‘s work is aboutness – an organism‘s interaction with its
environment. ―About thus evokes at one time all three parts of the mutual event: the organism in
its doing, the object it wants or wants to avoid, and the background location that supports its
doing by holding them related to each other‖ (Chapter 1, ―About Aboutness‖). Epp argues that
because aboutness is a relation it cannot be localized to the organism at all. Viewing knowledge
not as what humans ‗have‘ but what they ‗are‘, leads Epp to a theory that constructs whole-body
persons as knowledge. This theory brings power of interpretation of lived experience to concrete
subjects and original voices and allows us to question Postmodernist art‘s skepticism of
‗authenticity‘.

How is my research connected to the theoretical material I presented in this thesis? First,
reading the work of Edward Singerland and Ellie Epp coincided with changes happening in my
own relations to the environment. I felt a growing awareness of becoming part of this land and a
―part of the landscape‖10 – as it was described by a writer, activist and curator Lucy Lippard in
―The Lure of the Local‖ (34). This environment was affecting and transforming me while I was

11

travelling to the place of my Internship in Calgary. I believe it was reflected in my practice in
rendering land not in what can be described as aerial view, but from the ground level (Fig.2, Soil
Matters, 10/2011). It could be also traced in mapping my actual commute through the
agricultural land from Red Deer to Calgary (Fig.3, Ungoogled Earth, 11/2011). It felt as if I was
deciphering the map of Alberta between these two points.

Fig.2: Galia Kwetny, Soil Matters, 10/2011. Gouache, synthetic polymer, and oil on canvas, 65‖x110‖

Second, Ellie Epp views art-making in general and painting as ―sorts of intervention in the
making of persons‖ (Conclusion Chapter, Being About). She believes that these activities can
testify to the degree to which artists are adapted to their environment. I explore changes in my
own ties to the new place and the way they are reflected in my paintings. In her lecture ―Leaving
the Land: Perception and Fantasy‖ (2001) Ellie Epp said that the better we know the land the
more ―we are able to see the particularity of it‖ (8). One of the things that we can make is ―our
12

own ability to be with where we are. We begin instinctively, but then we can work at it more
deliberately‖ (9). As I look at the land around me, gather new visual data and register it in my art
- even as hints or fragments of something glimpsed - I learn more about the place I live in.

Fig. 3: Galia Kwetny Ungoogled Earth, 11/2011. Gouache, synthetic polymer, and oil on canvas, 60‖x92‖

Finally, the main focus of my research resides in ways of perceiving and representing
environment by displaced persons. Some theorists view the event of leaving land as ―rupture‖11.
Ellie Epp‘s conclusions allow clearer vision of changes happening in the embodied minds of
displaced persons. She shows that human bodies adapt through multiple ‗reconstructions‘. These
changes are the ways in which bodies come to be about their circumstances by altering in
response to them. Epp describes cognitive processes employing concepts of voluntary
synaesthesia which she calls ―half-ascribing‖12, conceptual and structural metaphor:

13

If we understand that our theoretical discourses are grounded in structural metaphors,
which in turn are elaborated uses of base level schemas built into the body through the
whole of a childhood, we could consider what it might cost, in terms of bodyrestructuring, to change the metaphors we think with, and what that cost may have to do
with resistance to paradigm shift. (Chapter 7, ―Thinking as a Structural Metaphor‖)

Envisioning human cognition in terms of close organic connection with the environment and
accepting the proposition of constructing whole-body persons as knowledge, we will approach
an understanding of radical changes that occur in the embodied mind placed in a new
environment.

14

1.2 Art Historical Contextualization
…some postmodernist art, skeptical of ‘authenticity’, prides itself on departing from
original voices. The sources of land-based art and aesthetics remain opaque to those who only
study them (Lucy Lippard, The Lure of the Local, 37)

Rich art-historical material fertilizes this philosophical ground. The works of art-theorists quoted
here contribute to the ‗mapping‘ of an epistemological shift of repositioning theories of cognition
within lived experience of concrete individuals.

Evidence of this shift as extrapolated from concrete artistic practices during the past two
decades was described by Irit Rogoff in her book Terra Infirma. Her epistemological inquiry
stresses difference rather than universal truth. Subjects‘ experience of disruption (leaving
homeland) is paralleled in her work to disrupted knowledge orders. In the light of embodied
cognition the interpretative authority of concrete lived experience is being granted to actual
subjects, and not to an ‗objective‘ system of knowledge. Rogoff demonstrates that commonalities
found in the artistic practices of individuals actually reflect contemporary conditions. These
commonalities include addressing the concepts of identity, place, and space and are manifested
through acts of mapping, re-mapping, and counter-cartographies. Rogoff believes that displaced
artists engaged in counter-cartography contribute to writing alternative and emergent collective
histories of those who ―have not fitted into patterns of agency within universal overarching
histories‖ (74).

My research views the act of mapping and addressing the land within the context of visual
arts as an encoding of accumulated knowledge as well as claiming of territory required for
creating new contexts. ―Beyond borders‖, writes Edward Said in ―The Mind of Winter –
15

Reflections on Life in Exile‖, ―lies the perilous territory of non-belonging‖ (51). Re-gaining this
sense of belonging for displaced persons is contingent on re-building of aboutness. It seems to
me, however, that this new sense of place will be always inscribed with lack: paraphrasing
Derrida‘s words it will be partially ―not there‖, and partially ―not that‖ (qtd. in Terra Infirma,69).
On the positive side of this phenomenon the new aboutness will have an additional element of a
different, cross-cultural way of seeing. It can be traced in representing objects and events in my
practice and other immigrant artists‘ practices and interpreted as overlaid histories and crosscultural mapping.
‗Living on the hyphen‘ is described as living in a hybrid space or in a ―shelter between
cultures‖ in Lucy R. Lippard‘s book The Lure of the Local. In her opinion while a hybrid culture
can be fertile ground for multicenteredness, assimilation might be a ―weapon against history,
burying multiple pasts under a single marker‖ (sic.) (62). This view supports my prediction that a
newly acquired aboutness will inevitably qualitatively differ from the original one. A statement
of Lippard‘s work that resonates with my research lies in the belief that ―despite the fragmented
configuration of all our centers, common ground among ethnicities can be offered by geography‖
(63). Rogoff arrives at a related conclusion that ―introducing questions of critical epistemology,
subjectivity and spectatorship into the arena of geography we shift the interrogation from the
center to the margins, to the site at which new and multi-dimensional knowledge and identities
are …being formed‖ (20). ―Shifting‖ the focus to ―the margins‖ will mean delegating agency and
power of interpretation to concrete individuals. It will also mean trusting original voices of artists
speaking about their lived experience.

16

Lippard interweaves pressing issues concerning land, culture and place and a possibility of an
art that shows stronger contextual ties. The author highlights the route to re-inventing aboutness:
―even if one‘s story [somewhere] is short, a place can still be felt as an extension of the body …
passing through and becoming part of the landscape‖ (43). Treating landscape as an ‗extension‘
of a living organism fortifies the logic of knowledge being structured by the complex organic
relation between an embodied mind and its environment.

Why am I attracted to the genre of landscape painting? From the very first step on Canadian
soil I remember myself looking around and comparing this new land around me to places I had
experienced in the past. Some views and smells reminded me of Russia, others of Israel. Getting
used to a new place, different mentality and unfamiliar way of life was challenging. It was
difficult for me to feel as an outsider, a person who does not belong. I tried to do my best in
adapting my skills and education to fit into a wider community of the city and province we lived
in. I studied painting at the University of Alberta. I had an epiphany moment when I tried to recreate the watermarks left by scarce rainfall in the desert which I saw and photographed in Grand
Canyon, on a trip to USA. The drawing reminded me simultaneously of the Negev Desert in
Israel, rock formations in the Rocky Mountains in Alberta, and tundra vegetation of the Russian
north. It felt as if I managed to connect all the places in the world that mattered to me on one
surface. My work is abstract and not really abstract as it speaks to me of more than one place, or
more than one landscape. I believe it is always about land, about that combined place of
experience that I can call my own. I often choose large scale for my work because I ‗inhabit‘ it
almost literally while painting.

17

Addressing questions of land and landscape in visual arts was the focus of attention of a
diverse group of scholars and practitioners at The Art Seminar at the Burren College of Art,
Ballyvaughan, Ireland in June 2006. As reported by Rachael Ziady DeLue et al in Landscape
Theory, the participants formulated several updated conceptualizations of landscape in/as art that
I see as contributing to my research.

The participants of The Art Seminar agreed that one of the most significant realizations that
came with Postmodernism is that landscape resists the illusion of an observing subject. ―Like the
body, landscape is something we all feel ourselves to be inside‖ (Landscape Theory, 88). It
echoes an earlier claim of Merleau-Ponty that landscape denies the presence of an absolute
observer, or a body without a spatial position (―The World of Perception‖, 41). It seems
appropriate here to consider the distinction between ‗-scape‘ of the word landscape (which is
closer to German Landschaft where –schaft or schaffen means ―to shape‖) and ‗scope‘ (view)
which was brought into the discussion at The Art Seminar. There is a notion of mutual shaping of
people and place as embedded in the original word ‗landscape‘. There is also an implication of
‗partnership‘ in the Old English word ‗landscipe‘. Today the meaning of ‗partnership‘ in
landscape is often replaced with ‗view‘. With certain conceptual slippage I apply the term
‗partnership‘ to the very process of creating landscapes in my practice. In my practice I see it
manifested in deliberate physicality of paint and its application. The materiality of medium and
the scale of surfaces I work with remind me of working on a real piece of land. The colors I
choose: orange, brown, blue, purple, and yellow- are the colors of Israeli landscape in my
experience that I reconstruct in my paintings. Applying the term voluntary synaesthesia or
conceptual slippage here I can compare a dialogue with a painting to an act of partnership. I

18

think of ‗working the landscape‘ and not ‗working on a landscape‘ – as in literally working in the
land, shaping it while being shaped by experience myself.

Conceptualization of landscape as embedded ideology was also discussed at The Art Seminar.
Landscape paintings have often been regulated by ideological concerns. Historical examples of
this could be the European colonial project or the idea of communist victory over subordinated
nature (this polemic was reflected in my practice during the work on paintings Promised and
Duomo, 05/2011, Fig.4, 5). Politics and history always influence landscape rendering. Marking
of presence in the actual soil, or marking it on a map or an image of land - will always be making
a claim of ownership and territoriality. Addressing geography in individual practices is
contributing to re-situating of interpretative authority and knowledge formation to the margins.

Fig.4: Galia Kwetny, Promised, 04/2011. Gouache, synthetic polymer, and oil on canvas, 69‖x104‖

19

The notion of landscape as a context for socio-political identity encompasses ideas of home and
belonging, locality and identity, social and environmental dangers of modernization, as well as
displacement and re-building of the sense of place. One of the central arguments of my thesis is
that strong connection with the environment is necessary for forging a new identity and reinventing the sense of belonging.

Fig.5: Galia Kwetny, Duomo, 05/2011. Gouache, synthetic polymer, and oil on canvas, 85‖x85‖

One more conceptualization of landscape that is relevant to my research comes from Lucy
Lippard: landscape as a way of seeing. She believes that ―if a landscape is a way of seeing, there
are potentially as many landscapes as individual ways of seeing, or at least as many as cultural
20

ways of seeing‖ (The Lure, 61). I would like to add here that for a person whose identity is
defined by more than one culture these two or more different ways of seeing will be overlapping
and influencing each other. In a landscape painted by an artist ‗on-a-hyphen‘ it might be realized
in literal overlapping of two or more landscapes. I believe that it happens in my work.

In the next chapter I will reference practices of several artists I feel affinity to. At certain
points in their careers they had to either grapple with leaving their home country and re-creating
themselves somewhere else, reflect on their own history as immigrants as an Israeli-American
artists Joshua Neustein, a Cuban-American artist Ana Mendieta or a Pakistani-American artist
Huma Bhabha, or ask questions to the histories of their homelands as German artist Anselm
Kiefer. In these practices several places on the globe are sometimes addressed at the same time.
There are elements of re-mapping or counter-cartography in some of the work of Joshua
Neustein and Julie Mehretu. These pieces are often large-scale as if the artists were creating an
actual place or a stage that could be acted on. Is geography a language for an immigrant artist in
crisis of not-belonging? Is counter-cartography an active position for overcoming this crisis? As
an artist dealing with displacement myself, I can say that for me incorporating elements of
cartography in my paintings and thinking of the places I lived in socio-geographic terms feels
like constructing a new place that I can rightfully inhabit.

21

CHAPTER 2 CONSTRUCTING A PLACE OF BELONGING

2.1 Analysis of Related Practices

Visual language is discourse, not reality… (Irit Rogoff, Terra Infirma, 102)

Poland-born, New-York-based, Israeli-American visual artist Joshua Neustein often turns to
images of maps in his paintings. Neustein also uses cartographic encoding in installations. His
series of paintings of maps can be viewed as contributing to the visual discourse on a major poststructuralist polemic – the location of theories of cognition and the epistemological shift
described by Irit Rogoff (Terra Infirma, 74). This work combines a scale alien to the tradition of
map-making and an austerity alien to painting or picture-making. It is easily ‗measurable‘ or
size-related to a body, the center of it accommodating what appears to be a cartographic image of
Israel. Is it a landscape or a map? Though it can be deciphered as an aerial view, I found myself
immediately ‗in the center of the region‘ as I approached the painting.

Joshua Neustein’s installation piece How History Became Geography (Fig 6) can be
considered symbolic for understanding of transformation of an individual‘s history into
geographic images and cartographic symbols. Speaking of his work, Irit Rogoff wrote: ―While
not wanting to privilege biography as an analytical tool, one must nevertheless recognize the
degree to which moving borders and shifting identities in the art correlate with the artist's own
itinerant history‖ ("The Discourse of Exile‖,11).

22

Fig. 6: Joshua Neustein, How History Became Geography, 1990. Wood podium, hand-painted map, cut glass, and
crystal chandelier, 210‖x100‖x100‖

23

A Pakistani-born American artist Huma Bhabha had been well-known for her assemblagebased sculptures when she turned to two-dimensional work. Her subject matter includes war,
colonialism, displacement, and pop culture. Bhabha starts with taking pictures of desolate
landscapes and abandoned construction sites in disparate locations, later layering images with
inks in saturated colors and sharp gestural figuration, lending the works spontaneity and raw
materiality. Her references come from different disciplines. She re-contextualizes them, ―often
misassociating them to create a larger, more comprehensive and oddly inclusive visual language‖
(sic.) (Modern Painters,55). Often bringing together figuration and landscape she ―presents a
state of decline that seems to be neither past, present, nor future‖(57).

Fig. 7: Huma Bhabha, Red Desert, 2010. Ink on photographic print, 60‖x94‖

24

Colors and materials used in Huma Bhabha work can allude to trauma, violence and decay,
but also ―connote reuse and re-birth through creative process‖ (57). This feature of Bhabha’s
work - allowing the possibility of ―re-birth through creative process‖ - I consider a meeting point
of our practices. Creating new histories for their places and for themselves is what people who
left their land do, according to Lucy Lippard (The Lure of the Local, 66). Bhabha’s ink paintings
over photographs are often large-scale, immersive. They look as if they were created for an
actual body to occupy. Very often she places images of a body or a part of human body (like a
huge foot) right in the center of her landscapes.

Silueta series of Cuban-American artist Anna Mendietta forecasts art-historical
developments ahead of her time. Mendieta’s work combines concepts of earth art, performance,
and body art. The pieces in the Silueta Series include imprints of the artist‘s body in the sand, on
cloth, and on a tombstone. Its outline is constructed in twigs and enhanced with wild flowers
which look as though they are growing through the body. Mendieta’s body-earth sculptures are
open to the elements as part of the environment in which the artist is aspiring to find her place
and to leave her mark. She is carrying on a dialogue between a landscape and a female body. She
writes about Silueta series that, ―…this has been a direct result of my having been torn from my
homeland‖ (Ana Mendieta – ―Press Release‖). The untitled works that comprise the Silueta
series, which she performed as she traveled between Iowa and Mexico, reveal her interest in the
earth as a site to address issues of displacement by recording the presence of her body—or the
imprint it left behind—within different natural environments.
Several issues discussed in this paper are at intersection here: the artist‘s living away from her
country and rupture in her aboutness, cultural fragmentation, claiming of territory, and

25

partnership or dialogue with the landscape. ―Transience and discontinuity are inscribed in every
aspect of this project‖, writes Irit Rogoff (127). The artist is desperately trying to establish her
connection with the new land – in this light I see our practices as addressing similar issues.

Julie Mehretu is an Ethiopian-American artist based in New York. This artist makes use of
cartographic symbols and elements of architecture combined with more organic-looking markmaking. Mehretu is interested in the process and history of ruination and in bearing witness to
the physical aftermath of war around the world. Destruction, ruination and recovery as it gets
recorded in this artist‘s work can be paralleled to rupture of displacement and re-building
connections in my practice.

In this artist‘s opinion, paintings are essentially ‗layered‘. Her pieces grow out of drawing and
mark-making, where every mark has a ―character, a modus operandi of social behaviour‖
(―Ethiopian Passages‖). Mehretu says she hopes to build a different kind of dimension of space
and time into her narratives. Layering of different drawn and painted marks in Julie Mehretu’s
paintings can allude to the layering of events in any individual‘s history. This aspect of Julie
Mehretu’s work is important for my research. Through layering of mark-making events I am
exploring the potential for conveying a different kind of dimension of space and time in my own
narrative. The manner of Mehretu’s mark-making in her ‗psycho-geographies‘ – meticulous in
cartographic elements or frenetic in organic-looking imagery – signifies social agency in making
her own vision of the world or re-writing its history. The scale of her work – often significantly
larger than the human body - and the exaggerated ‗absorbing‘ one-point perspective of the
geometrical ‗bones‘ in many pieces do not leave an option of spectatorship to the viewer. They
imply agency, urgency, and partnership in the process of creating-viewing.

26

German artist Anselm Kiefer‘s work often addresses land and history. It is a recurrent theme
in his practice and also one of the loci for asking questions about his country‘s heritage and
painful history. In the 1960-s he insisted on digging into the minefields of Germany‘s recent
horrible past when many of his countrymen would have preferred not to remember. Land as a recurrent theme in paintings of Anselm Kiefer began to emerge in 1974. Often they were specific
German landscapes that are broad cultivated plains. In this artist‘s rendering these were dark,
tortured fields, suggestive of scorched earth after some apocalyptic battle. One of his favorite
techniques is to pour a blob of melted lead onto an already ashen canvas. Kiefer is a selfconscious, ―deliberately ―German‖ artist‖ (Ronald Goetz). As such he is constantly engaged in
an on-going dialogue with his heritage.

While there are some figurative elements incorporated into paintings and those paintings
often start as (or on) a photograph – they grow into prolonged dialogues or collaborations of the
painter and the painting and end as vast abstracted creations. His paintings look like they have
been ‗lived in‘ or ‗fought in‘. The painter often makes use of lines or written words and found
objects in his work.

I feel affinity to the practice of this artist for his persistency in asking questions to and
through the land. He sees himself as belonging to the land– through which he investigates his
heritage and history. I sometimes use the coined term ―forenzic‖ – combining the words
‗forensic‘ and ‗frenzy‘ – to describe the physical evidence of the bodily presence in my
paintings. I see this feature present in Kiefer’s landscapes as well. They are often quite visceral,
have accentuated or exaggerated physicality (ashen canvas, added melted lead pored directly on
surface), and many of them are deliberately immersive.

27

Employing rendering of landscape and geography for raising questions on land, heritage, and
belonging, as well as our own active role in shaping the landscape and geography of this planet
by our experience – is a common feature of all the practices I referenced here. This is how I see
my own practice of landscape painting as connected to the events in the contemporary art
history.

28

2.2 Painting: Contemporary Condition

I believe that painting in its current state defies a single definition. One of the important features
of contemporary painting as a genre as art critic Barry Schwabsky admits in preface to Vitamin
P2: New Perspectives in Painting (2011) is the difficulty of adequately defining it or ―laying any
definitive statements about it‖ (11). Another feature that could be extrapolated from this account
of contemporary painting practices around the world is that ―painters are necessarily conscious
of their production as sharing an array of practices and conventions with deep roots in history‖.
And as today every medium represents just one possibility among many – painting is hardly the
only form of visual input that painters attend. It is also evident from the examples of practices
summoned for this research that nowadays if a conceptual statement can be adequately
formulated in terms of painting – then artists paint. If a different medium proves to be more
effective – they turn to video, installation, or site-specific art.

Painting whether it is a medium of choice for a project or a medium preferred by an artist,
engages an artist in two kinds of dialogue: a dialogue with the medium itself and a dialogue with
the history of the genre. Yve-Alain Bois – an art-historian and critic of modern art, believes that
―painting is essentially conceptual when it is self-referentially and self-critically addresses its
material qualities as well as the symbolic grammar of its own formal language‖ (qtd. in ―Why
Are Conceptual Artists Painting Again?‖ 10). In relation to this ―immanent criticality‖ the
strategic placement of painting in a network of internal references has the status of a ―metacritical gesture‖. Of course, this conceptuality is only a potential. To activate this potential a
painter must create contextual relations and practice continuous formal self-scrutiny. This
opinion mediates between conceptual and medium-specific perspective. Painting can no longer

29

be just painting. It has to be a form of conceptual art, as it is judged in relation to conceptual
practices in other media (―Why?‖, 13).

My paintings can be described as landscapes with elements of cartography or other
recognizable imagery. Many of them start as image-based or image-inspired. This is how
Schwabsky alludes to similar projects: ―they speak of promise, of the pursuit of something
glimpsed rather than of mastery‖ (Vitamin P2, 14). Schwabsky shows that abstract painting takes
many forms today. He emphasizes that many contemporary painters work ―on the borderline‖
between abstraction and images, seizing the moment when ―the potential for transition had
become more urgent than identification with a fixed position‖ (14). Following this logic I can
describe my practice as situated in-between abstraction and representation where any given mark
can read as abstract or as image-bearing, depending on how you look at it. Schwabsky uses an
art-historian Dario Gamboni‘s term ‗potential images‘ whose property ―is to make [the viewer]
aware either painfully or enjoyably – of the active, subjective way of seeing‖ (14). This quote
recalls Lucy Lippard‘s thought that ―there are potentially as many landscapes as individual ways
of seeing, or at least as many as cultural ways of seeing…‖(The Lure, 61). If we accept Irit
Rogoff‘s claim that new-knowledge-generating activity from the margins adds to re-situating
cognition through the networks of inter-subjectivity, these individual ways of seeing can be
embraced as valid and valuable contribution to the accumulated knowledge in any nation‘s
narrative and history.

How is the genre of painting instrumental in constructing a sense of place and belonging?
Rogoff believes that painting provides ―view from the body, always a complex, contradictory,
structuring and structured body, versus the view from above, from nowhere‖ (25). Ellie Epp

30

argues that a [landscape] painter is being formed by a landscape while also being ―formed by
many paintings; that he has taken these paintings into his wrists and shoulders as well as into his
eyes‖ – she views this intelligence as being ―grounded in contact with the natural world and at
the same time the very opposite of primitive‖ (Conclusion). Mira Schor – an artist, a writer and a
feminist insists that ―metaphorically expressive possibilities of the materiality of painting‖
contribute to ―the complexity of [its] visual language‖ (Wet, 169). The unmediated nature of the
genre allows it to be nourished by a lived experience of a subject.

Having a ―split identity‖ (Irit Rogoff) or being defined by several cultures in my case also
means being formed by diverse artistic traditions. Though I had not had any professional training
in fine arts till I arrived in Canada, I was always exposed to art in Russia and Israel. The
government-enforced utopian idealization of nature and people within Socialist Realism as the
only style allowed in Soviet Russia was in sharp contrast with a much more contemporary
openness to global artistic influences that I witnessed in Israeli museums and educational
institutions. Having my training in painting at the University of Alberta is sometimes seen as
being shaped by the ‗Prairies‘ color-field‘ school and action-painting, though conceptualism and
other more contemporary styles were welcome there during the last decade. As a painter I feel
that it is my responsibility to evaluate my work in relation to several theoretical discourses and
critiques of painting. After Mira Schor, I can say that I want to ―engage with the language of
painting‖, and explore the ―metaphorically expressive possibilities‖ of its materiality (Wet, 169).
In the spirit of ―correspondence‖ or a dialogue with art-historical styles offered by a KoreanJapanese artist Lee Ufan (Joan Kee, ―Lee Ufan: Marking Infinity‖, 147) I sometimes see myself
following the tradition of action-painters treating a surface as ―an arena in which to act‖
(Rosenberg, 22). When I paint, I often start working on the floor. My composition and general
31

color-scheme are always planned because my pieces are inspired by images. Gouache print
mimicking rock formation and natural growth is laid at the initial stage. After that I raise my
canvases and finish them in oil in the upright position. Details, text, and cartographic elements
are added on the upright canvas. This layering of events is symbolic for me reminiscing
palimpsest recording of encounters in my personal history. Scale of a piece is determined by the
initial idea or an image that inspired me and also by the planning of movement for my body
while working on it. The imprint of my body is thus being made into the surfaces of my
paintings – having no place to call my own I create paintings giving a physical body to an
experience.

32

2.3 Embodiment and Spatial Synchronicity
We are in the epoch of simultaneity; we are in the epoch of juxtaposition, the epoch of
near and far, of side-by-side, of the dispersed (Michel Foucault, qtd. in The Lure of the
Local, 4)

According to Thesaurus ‗embodiment‘ means:

1. A new personification of a familiar idea
2. A concrete representation of an otherwise nebulous concept
3. Giving concrete form to an abstract concept
(http://www.thefreedictionary.com/embodiment)
At its most general, ‗embodiment‘ in my discourse is an emphasis on understanding human
life as the life of a physical body. The following definition of embodiment as a new academic
approach comes from Lise Weil, an author and a faculty advisor at the Goddard College
(http://web.goddard.edu/embodiment/epistemology.html). It is in direct connection with the
embodiment theory I have outlined earlier in this thesis:

We have thought of knowledge the way we think of wealth, as something that can be put
away in treasuries or concentrated in precious objects. If knowing is something I am, not
something I have, an implication is that knowledge as such is not storable outside bodies:
knowledge as effective cognitive structure can only be constituted and reconstituted in
individual bodies. Middlemarch and the Philosophical Investigations cannot hold
knowledge - they can evoke, build, organize it, but only in bodies already capable of
reorganizing themselves to fit, and only in a world able to produce such bodies.

33

Experience and knowledge structuring my body was acquired in three different countries,
three cultures, and can be verbalized in three different languages. When I paint I give physical
body to experience of different warmth (climate) I have felt, texture (terrain) that I have moved
in, intensity (safety or danger) I have experienced. I can re-structure memories in my body with
as little a prompt as a sound of a name of a distant place. My re-gained aboutness has multiple
layers. I can testify to experiencing spatial synchronicity while painting – just the sensation as
someone who once visited e.g., Egypt might have had watching TV reports of street
demonstrations in Cairo in 2011.

While working on In Formation (Fig 8), I was thinking of how well I know the region I now
live in: I hike and drive in Alberta surrounded by its plains, fields, and mountains. I feel at home
here while staying in my own shelter ‗between cultures‘.

Fig. 8 Galia Kwetny, In Formation, 03/2012. Gouache, synthetic polymer, and oil on canvas, 72‖x90‖

34

I explore British Columbia skiing sites and wilderness routes. My annual drive to my
university in Vancouver helps me experience these two provinces as connected in one landscape
I am now a part of. Actual driving or moving through the land as opposed to flying above it
makes me experience what Lucy Lippard described as ‗becoming part of the landscape‘. The title
of the work reflects awareness that my sense of place is still ‗in formation‘. At some point during
working on this piece I realized that the colors I chose for the plains in Alberta were too warm
and what I was thinking of was no longer a Canadian landscape but the Negev Desert in Israel
that I frequently hiked in. Orange, brown, blue, purple, and yellow – are the colors of Israeli
landscape in my experience that I re-constructed in this painting. When I oil-painted the borders
of the two provinces on top of that landscape I knew that for me it encompassed two places in
my experience – knowing that gave me great satisfaction.
Qumran, (Fig. 9) started as an image-inspired piece and homage to Edward Burtinski
photography. One of his pieces titled Silver Lake Operations #1, 2007, evoked a memory of
looking down at the Dead Sea from a cliff in the Judean Mountains. That, in turn brought in the
memories of the chill and slightly sour smell of caves in those mountains, history of Qumran
scrolls and cave paintings, as well as the brutal harshness of the afternoon hot wind in the Dead
Sea valley that dies off after sunset. While I was working on the upper part of Qumran painting I
felt compelled to add several pieces of paper with relief marks made by literally blotting the
excess of paint off oil-painted field in Sheltered, 12/2011. The orange oil area in Sheltered had a
map of Red Deer scratched in later. Embedding pieces of the image of Alberta‘s ‗oil-field‘ into
the painting of the Dead Sea was a symbolic act for me, and another case of metaphorically
expressed spatial synchronicity.

35

In my paintings embodiment manifests itself through size-related to my body scale of work;
through unsuppressed physicality of the medium and often through exaggeration of it – using
conceptual slippage I can describe it as trying to give more physical ‗body‘ to an experience. It
can be traced in energetic marks of metaphorical ‗working the land‘ in the dialogue or
partnership of creating a landscape.

Fig. 9: Galia Kwetny, Qumran, 04/2012. Gouache, synthetic polymer, and oil on canvas, 72‖x90‖

36

Fig.10: Galia Kwetny, Community, 05/2012. Gouache, synthetic polymer, and oil on canvas, 65‖x120‖

How is my latest painting, Community, 05/2012, (Fig.15) related to the subject of
embodiment? Certainly, it is a product of my embodied mind‘s experience of several cultures in
a form of a painting. But there are deeper ties here as the idea of creating this painting came from
mistaking a photograph of one of the Dead Sea scrolls damaged by time - for an image of
Pangaea – an undivided prehistoric super-continent. Seeing an ancient scroll ‗as if‘ it were a map
of some land was a case of voluntary synaesthesia, which was described by Edward Singerland
in his interpretation of embodied cognition theory. Deliberately painting the image of the scroll
as a map of undivided world was a symbolic act of reaffirming the power of the phenomenon of
voluntary synaesthesia, which I have been referring to in this research in its importance for
adaptation of individuals in a new environment. There was also an additional link to embodiment
in the process of creating this piece: as I planned to copy the exact outlines of the damaged
manuscript I only had to preserve the ratio of its measurements. I had not intended to make this
37

work large-scale. When I started working on the painting however, I had to change the scale
several times till the width exactly matched my height: 5.5‘. Only then I was comfortable to
work on it. It felt as if I was describing an actual space that my body could inhabit.

This painting refers to spatial synchronicity in a more conceptual way. More focused research
of that particular Qumran scroll yielded several metaphors that I gladly embraced – such as the
title of it: ―Community Rule‖ and the name of the community that produced it – ―Yahad‖ –
meaning ―unity‖ or ―togetherness‖ in Hebrew. I interpret rendering a scroll as a map of a ‗world‘
as homage to the world of biblical wisdom and to the interconnectedness of the world cultures.
For me it also has a symbolic meaning of different continents connected in my personal
experience.

38

CONCLUSION
Discussion of an embodied mind‘s connection with the environment and adjusting to a new place
has been intended by me to elevate the matter of displacement from the convenient language of
universal empathy to the level of contemporary discourse on identity and knowledge formation.

Philosophical and scientific insights into the cognitive processes of an embodied mind offered
some explanations of transformations involved in the process of re-building the sense of
belonging. If we accept that knowledge is not what we have but what we are, then we may agree
that an effective cognitive structure can only be constituted and reconstituted in individual
bodies. Resituating a theory of cognition within lived experience grants individuals power,
agency, and interpretative authority. This in turn means that experience of concrete individuals
taken in its shared commonalities with others can outline social and cultural tendencies in
contemporary society. While this approach promises no privileged access to objective truths, it
can result in a stable body of shared knowledge, verified by proofs based on common perceptual
access. Within this thesis I applied it to the work of several artists who address problems of
place, heritage, and identity in hope that it might contribute to a more integrated, ―embodied‖
approach to the study of painting and culture.

Conceptualizations and contextualization of different stages of displacement (rupture, cultural
shock, withdrawal, multi-centeredness) offered by the theoretical investigations summoned here
have been instrumental in achieving a clearer understanding of the ways how living away from
one‘s home country is reflected in artistic practices. Examples of the artists‘ work reflect a
widespread nature of the phenomenon of displacement and a spectrum of themes addressed.
Asking questions through representations of land and questioning one‘s country‗s history and
39

heritage (as in the practice of Anselm Kiefer) can take shape similar to dealing with issues of
place and identity in visual arts. Commonalities in the ways of addressing land in the works
referenced in this thesis included elements of cartography, large scale of work, expressed
physicality of material, as well as partial abstraction of the images. Images of land were
interpreted as being about more than one concrete place, or more than about one particular
country. With artists who live ‗on-the-hyphen‘ or ‗in a shelter between several cultures‘ it can
easily be the case.

Painting as a medium has been examined here in its potential to serve the formation of
emerging epistemological systems and as means and field for future explorations. Painting in its
current state defies single definition. Many painters work on ‗borderline‘ between abstraction
and images, exploring a potential for transition, preferring it to any fixed position. Today, when a
different medium seems to be more efficient for conveying a conceptual message - then painters
turn to other media.

An overview of my practice in the light of embodied cognition theory has been combined
with a report on experiencing multi-centeredness interpreted as spatial synchronicity in my work.
In this time of simultaneity and juxtaposition, time of a side-by-side co-existence of different
cultural ways of seeing, the unmediated nature of the genre of painting allows it to reflect the
overlapping of several ways of seeing within individual practices.

40

ENDNOTES
1

At its most general, ‗embodiment‘ in my thesis is an emphasis on understanding human

life as the life of a physical body. Embodied cognition theory bridges the classical mind/body
divide and views whole-bodied persons as locus of knowledge formation.
2

―Sense of place‖- according to theorist Lucy Lippard and ―a serial sensitivity to place, are

invaluable social and cultural tools, providing much-needed connections to what we call ―nature‖
and, sometimes, to cultures not our own‖ (The Lure of the Local, 33).
3

The term ―representational events‖ is introduced by a Canadian scholar and artist Ellie Epp in

her PhD dissertation paper Being About: Perceiving, Imagining, Representing, Thinking (2002).
―Representational objects and events‖ are phenomena produced by representational practices,
and ―representational effects‖ are structured by representational objects and events
(Introduction).
4

Aboutness – It is engagedness between a living thing and its environment (Ellie Epp). ―The

term acknowledges that we are not in a position to be very exact but we want to ground our
thinking about cognition in the understanding that it is accomplished by spatiotemporal means,
by bodies. Doing so, we can include perception and action in what we mean by knowing,
because they are forms of successful contact with things in the world‖ (Chapter 1, Intrinsic
Aboutness)
5

In Ellie Epp‘s formulation ‗representation‘ and ‗cognition‘ are not synonymous. Where other

writers talk about ‗mental representation‘ she speaks instead about ‗cognitive structure‘ or
‗structural aboutness‘. A theory of representation in Epp‘s understanding - is implied within a

41

general theory of cognition; a theory of cognition is not implied within a theory of representation
(Chapter 6, Representing).
6

Schemas in this discourse are base-level sensory-motor units. Cognitive psychologist George

Lakoff describes base level spatial schemas as sources of logics used abstractly. This scholar
accumulated significant evidence that the structure important to sensori-motor spatial function
(schema) is used act-metaphorically in a very large group of cognitive operations. One of main
claims of Ellie Epp is that the ―humanly prestigious abilities we call thinking are culturally
developed variants of base-level schemas and base-level aboutness‖ (Being About, Ch.7) In his
book The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination and Reason, 1987,
philosopher Mark Johnson sketched out ―geography of human experience‖ firmly grounded in
the body. He argued that embodied structure, ‗the schema‘ is the fundamental unit of meaning
(qtd. in What Science Offers the Humanities, 163).
7

The traditional dualistic approach to art that harkens back to Aristotle could be traced in

connecting e.g., drawing and writing with the realm of the Mind and painting – with the Body.
Mark Johnson provides a concise summary of the ―cluster of claims‖ that makes up what Edward
Singerland calls ‗objectivism‘: ―The world is as it is, no matter what any person happens to
believe about it, and there is one correct ―God‘s-Eye-View‖ about what the world really like‖
(qtd. in What Science). Within this frame of thought Mind has a potential of transcendence –
coming close to the understanding of the singularly correct ―God‘s-Eye-View‖, while the Body
only serves as a container for the Mind. An American philosopher, mathematician, and computer
scientist Hilary Whitehall Putnam notes that ―[Interactive qualities such as] color and warmth

42

seemed to have no place in such a conception of nature and were banished to the status of mere
subjective affections…‖ (qtd. in What Science, 34).
8

Lucy Lippard considers ‗multicenteredness‘ a result of living in a ‗hybrid culture‘. Displaced

persons have many centers – they lived in and experienced several countries, or several cultures;
they speak several languages. They can live in what Lippard calls ―a shelter between cultures‖
and be identified by two or more worlds (The Lure, 62).
9

The term ―voluntary synaesthesia‖ is introduced by Edward Singerland in What Science Offers

the Humanities. Synaesthesia involves the unusual blending of two or more senses. Recent
research suggests that it is the result of ―neurological cross-activation‖ (21). Voluntary crossactivation of cognitive modules is called voluntary synaesthesia.
10

Lucy Lippard opines that ―the land and even the spirit of place can be experienced kinetically,

or kinaesthetically, as well as visually‖. ―Even if one‘s history there is short, a place can still be
felt as an extension of the body… passing through and becoming part of the landscape‖ (34).
11

Irit Rogoff in Terra Infirma, p.39: ―…the tragedies and human ruptures involved in forced

migration and flight…‖, Lucy Lippard in The Lure of the Local, ―Out of Place‖, p.62.
12

The term ―half-ascribing‖ corresponds to the term ‗voluntary synaesthesia‘ used by Edward

Singerland. Epp describes synaesthesia as systematic but perceptually irrelevant co-activation of
different subnets of a wide net, so that we feel a sensory quality as belonging to an object that
can‘t have that quality. (Half-ascribing e.g., knowing that pain is not ‗yellow‘, but still describing
it so) (Part 3, Chapter 7, Metaphor).

43

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Alba, Richard and Victor Nee. Remaking the American Mainstream. Assimilation and
Contemporary Immigration. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005. Print.

Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. 1958. Trans. Maria Jolas. Boston: Beacon Press Books,
1994. Print.

Binkley, David. ―Ethiopian Passages. Interview with Julie Mehretu‖, 2003. Web. 10 Aug. 2012.
http://www.nmafa.si.edu/exhibits/passages/mehretu-conversation.html

Deleuze, Gilles. Francis Bacon. The Logic of Sensation. 1981. Trans. Daniel W. Smith.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Prints, 2003. Print.

Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Trans. G.C. Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1974. Print.

Epp, Ellie. ―Being About: Perceiving, Imagining, Representing, Thinking.‖ Web. 15 Mar. 2012.
http://www.ellieepp.com/theory/beingabout/being.html

___. ―Leaving the Land: Perception and Fantasy.‖ Lecture. Web. 15 Mar. 2012.
http://www.ellieepp.com/theory/leaving.html

Goetz, Ronald. ―Anselm Kiefer: Art as Atonement.‖ Web. 21 Apr. 2012.
http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=941

Kee, Joan. ―Lee Ufan: Marking Infinity‖, Artforum, May 2011: 147, Print.
44

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1964. ―Eye and Mind‖. The Primacy of Perception. Carleton Dallery.
Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1993. Print.

___. 1948. The World of Perception. 2004. trans. Oliver Davis. New York: Routledge Classics,
2008. Print.

Miller, Virginia. ―Ana Mendieta – Press Release‖, 2001. Web. 15 March 2012
http://www.virginiamiller.com/exhibitions/1990s/AnaMendieta.html

Rogoff, Irit. Terra Infirma. Geography’s Visual Culture. London and New York: Routledge,
2000. Print.

___. ―The Discourse of Exile - Geographies and Representation of Identities" Journal of
Philosophy and Visual Art vol.1. Jul 1989: 70-76. Print.

Rosenberg, Harold. ―The American Action Painters‖, Tradition of the New, originally in Art
News 51/8, Dec. 1952: 22. Print.

Said, W. Edward. ―Invention, Memory, and Place‖, Landscape and Power. Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press, 2000. Print.

Schor, Mira. Wet: On Painting, Feminism, and Art Culture. 1996. Durham and London: Duke
University Press, 1997. Print.

Singerland, Edward. What Science Offers the Humanities. New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2008. Print.

45

Schwabsky, Barry. ―Preface‖. Vitamin P2: New Perspectives in Painting. New York: Phaidon
Press, 2011. Print.

Verwoert, Jan. ―Why Are Conceptual Artists Painting Again?‖ Web. 15 Apr. 2012.
http://www.afterall.org/journal/issue.12/why.are.conceptual.artists.painting.again.because

Ziady DeLue, Rachael, James Elkins eds. Landscape Theory, 2008. New York: Routledge, 2010.
Print.

Zuckerman Jacobson, Heidi. ―Hopeful Disasters: the Drawn-on Terrain of Huma Bhabha‖,
Modern Painters, Dec 2011/ Jan 2012, ARTINFO.COM: 54-57. Print.

46