Joyce Wieland

Joyce Wieland (1930–1998) was a mixed-media artist and experimental filmmaker celebrated for bringing feminist concerns to the forefront of Canadian art in the 1960s and 1970s. Wieland drew inspiration from Canadian history, politics and ecology, and she became widely known for her innovative approach to addressing gender and landscape in film. After returning to Canada in 1971 from New York, where she had been working since the early 1960s, mostly in film, Wieland began to challenge modernist ideals by incorporating into her practice traditionally feminine materials such as sewing, knitting, rug hooking and embroidery. Wieland’s first solo exhibition had been presented at the Isaacs Gallery, Toronto (1960); just over a decade later, the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, opened True Patriot Love (1971), a survey exhibition of Wieland’s work that was the gallery’s first retrospective for a living Canadian woman artist. Wieland was also the subject of the first retrospective of a living Canadian woman artist at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, with the presentation of a major travelling exhibition of her work (1987). Other notable solo exhibitions include those presented at McMaster University Art Gallery, Hamilton (1990) and the Vancouver Art Gallery (1968). Wieland’s work has been part of numerous group exhibitions, including the touring exhibition Traffic: Conceptual Art in Canada 1965–1980 (2012); Reflections: Contemporary Art since 1964, at the National Gallery of Canada (1984); and Painting in Canada, Expo 67, Montreal (1967). Wieland’s work has been collected extensively in private and public collections, including the National Gallery of Canada; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Vancouver Art Gallery; and the Art Gallery of Ontario. Wieland was a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts and was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1982.