Miya Turnbull’s three-dimensional self-portraits masks are a combination of photography, sculpture and collage. They’re the type of exciting work that makes the visual art world sit up and take notice: Landing her on the cover of Visual Art News (the region’s largest art publication), getting scooped up by the Nova Scotia Art Bank (a provincial effort to collect and maintain a database of significant works by local artists) and staged in shows everywhere from Cape Breton to Florida.
This weekend, though, you have a chance to help make a masterpiece happen: Turnbull is looking for 100 volunteers to don her masks for a large-scale photo shoot that will be held at Point Pleasant Park’s Cambridge Battery on Saturday, October 8 from 4-6pm. The group photo has some ground rules: Turnbull needs participants to RSVP to selfportraitmaskproject@gmail.com and requests you wear dark colours and dress in warm layers. “This huge photoshoot will entail 100 participants each embodying a different variation of Turnbull’s
self-portrait in mask form. Together the group photo and videos will capture an eerie gathering of her
‘multiple selves’ standing together and performing basic movements,” a press release that accompanied the call-out says.
More details will be communicated with participants via email, but a rain date for the project (if needed) will be Monday, October 10 from 4-6pm.
“With each variation of my masks,” Turnbull says in the release, “I am
attempting to continuously hone in on the transitory nature of identity, duality and in-betweenness”,
speaking to her own cultural identity of mixed Japanese Canadian heritage. “My goal is to reveal and
embody something previously hidden.”
This article appears in Oct 1 – Nov 6, 2022.
