Kara Springer's practice explores the intersections of the body and industrial modes of production
August 15, 2022
To curate an exhibition, it takes about six months to put together the details.
Given a three-month window to develop a show for late spring, Kara Springer was understandably hesitant.
The opportunity of doing her first solo exhibition in Canada was, however, too good to turn down.
“That was very important to me as it was a chance to try out some ideas I had been thinking about for a while,” said Springer who was born in Barbados and raised in Canada. “The new installation that was part of the show was me exploring ideas that have been on my mind for some years.”
‘I / must be given words’ seeks to find truth in the confounding of sensory experience and perception, suggesting that an unstable ground is perhaps the most productive one from which to begin making meaning.
The title was borrowed from the line of a poem written by Barbadian poet and academic Kamau Brathwaite who died in February 2020.
“I listened to a recording of Kamau reading that poem as I was developing some of the works for the show and what resonated with me in that piece is the call for new and necessary freedom,” said Springer whose interdisciplinary practice explores the precarity and brokenness in systems of structural support through engagement with architecture, urban infrastructure and systems of institutional and political power.
“I had a done a lot of work prior to this that was coming from a place of almost institutional critique like thinking about broken systems. You end up working for these problematic places and giving them your energy. That was where my head was. This project was nice because I feel like this was partly me going through the transition that happened during the pandemic and not being in an institutional setting like I am in now. I really wanted to move towards thinking about how do we put that energy to work building systems and structures of care and support.”
In the exhibition, high resolution scans of Springer’s skin were transformed into deep oceanic blues through a simple digital function that inverses the colour spectrum. These images are further thrown into flux because of the light boxes’ changing brightness as their light ebbs and flows in tandem with her breathing patterns transmitted in real time from a device the artist wears to a central motherboard.
Kara Springer with her daughter Noa Kai Springer Campbell and mom Judith Aikman Springer at the exhibit opening (Photo by Dr. Kenneth Montague)
A member of the Wedge Collection, Springer’s landmark exhibit was presented at the Patel Brown Gallery in Toronto.
Established in 1997 by Dr. Kenneth Montague, the Wedge Collection is one of Canada’s largest privately owned contemporary art collections focusing on exploring African Diasporic culture and contemporary Black life.
“Kara and I grew up in Windsor where our families were part of a small but vibrant community of immigrants from the Caribbean,” said the founding director. “So we share a unique perspective on the Black Canadian experience. Her powerful conceptual works resonate deeply with me.”
Springer, whose interdisciplinary practice explores the intersections of the body and industrial modes of production through sculpture, photography and designed objects, completed a Bachelor of Science with honours in Life Sciences at the University of Toronto and a Bachelor of Design in Industrial Design at the Ontario College of Art & Design.
Why did she combine visual and applied arts?
“I love making things and I am interested in problem solving in a physical and tangible way,” said Springer who has a Master’s in New Media and Contemporary Technology from a French design school in Paris. “I studied Industrial Design partly because I was always interested in the arts, but I wanted to be creative in a more practical way. I just didn’t feel like it was okay to be just an artist. I felt the need to justify what I was doing. My design practice is about intervention and thinking about how do we use design objects to facilitate change. A lot of my work is related to childbirth and just giving women agency within their experience of childbirth.”
In 2008, she founded the Kaya Birth Stool that is designed to support the most natural and physiologically effective positioning throughout labour and delivery.
“That came out of my undergraduate thesis work that looked at historical and cross-cultural practices of childbirth,” noted Springer who has a young child and is a Whitney Museum of American Art alumna. “I was reading about it at the time which is what sparked my interest to pursue that research. I looked at the history of childbirth really moving out of the hands of women to predominantly male physicians in hospital settings. That changed what birth looks like from women upright and moving around to lying on their back on a bed. Best child practices support women delivering in ways that they have traditionally across the world.”
The institutional models go into hospitals and birthing centres while the lighter weight personal ones offer women the ability to be in an upright position in settings of their choice.
While with members of Black Women Artists for Black Lives Matter at the New Museum in New York City in the summer of 2016, she was drawn to a line, ‘white people, do something’, that came out during a theatrical performance that the group created.
Struck by the power of that statement, the multidisciplinary conceptual artist erected a black sign a few weeks later with the words, ‘white people. do something’, emblazoned on it in the courtyard of Temple University’s Tyler School of Art and Architecture in Philadelphia where she was completing a Master of Fine Arts, specializing in Sculpture.
Titled ‘A Small Matter of Engineering, Part II’, it faced the university’s main passageway with a large glass-sided hallway. Accompanying the 8 x 30 foot sign was a magnified photograph of broken plaster inside titled, ‘A Small Matter of Engineering, Part I’.
“In my art practice, I am interested in putting language into public space in different ways,’ Springer, who grew up playing with clay and making little wire sculptures, said. “In north Philadelphia, I was in an area that is predominantly Black and is being displaced in many ways by the university.”
Made without permission, the digital mount went viral and quickly elicited positive and angry responses.
“There was a lot of strange unexpected energy,” said Springer whose work has been exhibited in Jamaica, Germany, Portugal and Italy. “The one nice thing that came out of it is that people in the community came out and put it back in place after it was blown over by the wind and rain. I did that at first with other people, but stopped.”
Kara Springer (Photo by Andrew Campbell)
Most immigrant parents expect their children to take up traditional careers.
Dr. Colvin Springer, who is a Radiation Oncologist at Windsor Regional Hospital and Judith Aikman Springer, a lawyer whose area of practice focuses on immigration and poverty law, were no different.
“It wasn’t them explicitly saying it was not okay, but I felt it,” the younger of two siblings said. “I still ask myself if I am doing enough and making my contribution. I just feel like I need to live up to something.”
Springer holds her parents – mom and dad migrated from Jamaica and Barbados respectively – in high regard.
“They are just very caring in the work that they do,” she said. “Their work is about supporting people in a tangible and impactful way. Even just setting this high bar of thinking about what am I doing and how am I contributing in caring for people in my community is because of them.”
Springer, who has an interest in research and academic engagement, is currently on a six-month residency in Basel, Switzerland.
