Collection: Chantal New

Chantal New (she/her) is a multimedia artist working predominantly in mixed media drawing and installation. Her work explores the significance of memory and the intersections between cultural and environmental geographies. She currently lives and works on the unceded Coast Salish territories of the Lekwungen speaking peoples, the Esquimalt, Songhees, and WSÁNEĆ nations, known as Victoria, BC.

Chantal's artistic work is a study, predominately in multimedia drawing, of the relationship between humanity and the impermanence of the world. As an artist, her focus is to be attuned to moments and objects that are bypassed in contemporary culture – such as discarded photographs and found objects. Through acts of collecting and mark making, she searches for the sublime in mundane moments and objects. 

Her visual and theoretical work has two main trajectories. Her first focus is an exploration of memory and temporality. Often using old, found photographs as a departure point, she investigates the link between memory and place creating elusive narratives by dismantling photographs physically and philosophically. The use of collage and photo-transfer explores reproductive media’s ability to transcend time. The second trajectory of her work employs art as a form of social acupuncture. An avenue to critical engagement and dialogue with the systems and structures around us. Equally conceptual and representational, Chantal's work serves as a springboard into speculating about how we embody the past and how we can protect the future.