My work begins with a slew of interconnected questions that froth in my mind and take on a welcomed absurd hue as they overpour. I relish the bizarre habit of seeking answers from the things around me as if they hold thoughts and stories to help answer my questions. I am drawn to materials that have a disposable nature to their function, to which I manipulate into strange new forms and gain altered perspectives regarding our relationships to the things we use. Such materials range from household consumables to parts of industrial machinery. By manipulating these materials through sensorial experiments like sound, my work stimulates an inquisitive playfulness that guides participants in introspective conversations. I value how my work inspires discussions that slip from little musings to more complex thoughts in an open dialogue that almost comedically originate from the core of innocuous objects. 

During the Luminous Bodies Residency, I will combine my asthma medical records with my musical background to create work. I am interested in working towards an interactive sculpture comparing expired steam turbine oil filters to my inhibited lungs. Both exist as part of a system that implements air as breath and I am fascinated by how voice is configured around it. There is a Cageian influence contributing to my research that recognizes noise as organized sound. Removing the steel case from these filters reveals an accordion folded tube that fans out like a flower. The metal folding style provides an elasticity and with a slight tap, they appear to breathe. I will explore these filters spread out on a landscape like a garden of oscillating monoliths. 

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Alicia Proudfoot is a Canadian artist, who utilizes sculpture, installation and printmaking to assert an interactive component and encourages an exploration of dialogue on a physical level. She completed her BFA at the University of Alberta in 2016 and is completing her MFA at NSCAD University. Her latest exhibitions were the West Fraser Performing Arts Theatre in Hinton, Alberta – as a commissioned artist installing her public work The Spectator: In Retrospection – and the YICCA International Contemporary Art Competition (2018) – where she played a stringed instrument in the body of a love seat at the Hernandez Art Gallery in Milan, Italy.