Janice Wright Cheney

“Trespass,” a recent exhibition by Fredericton artist Janice Wright Cheney at the New Brunswick Museum in Saint John, unfolded on all three levels of the museum. The NBM, which has a mandate “… to collect, preserve, research, and interpret the natural and cultural history of the province…” is the oldest exhibitor of visual arts in the province, with a long history of mounting exhibitions featuring New Brunswick’s artists. This project, part of the museum’s “Know Your Own Artists” series, has a bit of a twist. Rather than obediently staying on the third floor gallery normally assigned to such exhibitions, Wright Cheney’s project was spread throughout the museum’s permanent collections. In addition to an installation in the assigned gallery, her work was found in rooms dedicated to New Brunswick furniture, to marine life, to New Brunswick industry and to other temporary exhibitions. The works in this ten-year survey take on new meaning when placed within this context.

As the exhibition title suggests, the works intrude and sometimes trespass on their surroundings. She has used insects, parasites and vermin as the subject for many of her embroidered and constructed textile works, subjects of obvious concern to any collecting institution. Insects in particular are both enemy and friend of a museum, as they can destroy valuable items of textiles, wood, paper, leather, etc., yet are used by many museums, including the NBM, to clean bones for their natural history collections. In Trespass, rats, coyotes, fleas, silkworms, gypsy moths and a giant squid made by Wright Cheney all find their places within the existing collection displays.

Museums house things that were once useful, such as tools, furniture and clothing, items that have lost their context in our modern lives. In a display of vitrines containing a Victorian night dress, a chemise and an oriental kimono, Sabot could be another Victorian curio, a lost artifact. It is, however, a moose hoof with ruched dark pink velvet forming a long boot of sorts, topped with fur trim. In the context of the kimono and Victorian garments one can’t help but think of the barbaric customs for creating ideal female bodies—Chinese foot binding and the Victorian removal of ribs to create small waists, not to mention modern “nips and tucks.” The word “sabot” comes from the French word for clog or wooden shoe, and the rich velvet and fur dress up this simple moose hoof found on the forest floor. It is both feminized and fetishized by the artist’s addition of these materials.

Fur is also prominent in Rats, an ongoing serial piece the artist is making out of old fur coats, felted wool and horse hair. Based on the common Norway rat, these small, simply constructed creatures personify what one might term “ratness.” Wright Cheney is making hundreds of these small sculptures in a variety of different furs for an upcoming exhibition. In the New Brunswick Museum, a dozen “rats” are situated in a diorama of a 19th-century wharf, interspersed amidst wooden barrels and crates. They are not the first thing you notice, but when you do see them they don’t look out of context. Of course, as a society we don’t like rats—they are creepy, bring disease and embody many fears. Fur coats, collars and wraps, which were once a signifier of feminine elegance and wealth, are made disagreeable as the artist transforms these garments into vermin.

Wright Cheney’s new installation “Coy Wolves” was made specifically for this exhibition based on research on the Eastern Coyote, which now lives in New Brunswick and is considerably larger than its western counterpart because, as the coyotes have moved east, they have been interbreeding with wolves. Some biologists consider it a new species, and Wright Cheney decided that as such it needed a name. Using the museum convention of the diorama, the artist created a tableau of five “coy wolves”; they are elegant creatures, made of rich velvet and brocade upholstered on taxidermy forms, with long curled eyelashes, lace veils, rhinestone necklaces and fur wraps. They are ladylike and ready for a night out. Coy under their long eyelashes and their elegant coverings, these wolves could well be descended from the ancient wolves that suckled Romulus and Remus, or from other wolves described in legends and told to children to instill both fear and respect.

Wright Cheney has created a diorama in which they are pacing around drawers of bones—remains of other “coy wolves”—and don’t appear happy about being examined or categorized. They don’t want us picking over the bones. Like the wolf in Red Riding Hood, they seem to be playing dress up; two wear coyote pelts like capes, accessorized with lace and rhinestones. In their mouths several have bones; one has a veil she may well have snatched from another. These are tough old dears, who will remain ladylike until you cross them. Then don’t be surprised if they bite. ❚

“Janice Wright Cheney: TRESPASS” was exhibited at the New Brunswick Museum in Saint John from September 11, 2010, to January 2, 2011.

Sarah Maloney is a Halifax-based artist.