JOHNSON, Merritt

Exorcising America: Water Safety Exercises ( 2016, 5:01)
Thursday August 24, 7:30 pm
291 Lake Shore Boulevard East (just west of Parliament St.)
Presented in partnership with Art Spin and Waterfront Toronto in conjunction with Desire Lines

Saturday June 10, 7:30 pm
Guild Park and Gardens
Presented in partnership with (Un)settled

Learn to recognize when water is unsafe. Water is unsafe when it contains crude oil, refined petrochemicals, heavy metals, chemical fertilizer, chemical insecticides or any combination of organic or inorganic compounds that prevent water from supporting itself and everything that depends on it through the continuous processes of hydration, incubation, filtration, erosion, and evaporation. Unsafe water may exhibit signs of distress including but not limited to: color changes, thick or oily surface film, bad smells, bad taste, flammability, itchiness, burning sensations upon contact, animal death, plant death. Water safety exercises may not fully prevent or avert health complications from unsafe water, including but not limited to itchy skin, watery eyes, organ failure, reproductive complication, certain types of cancer, plant die off, animal die off, and weather pattern distortion. The best way to keep water safe is through protection from crude oil, refined petrochemicals, heavy metals, chemical fertilizer, chemical insecticides or any combination of organic or inorganic compounds that prevent water from supporting itself and everything that depends on it. No Dakota Access Pipeline. Support Standing Rock.

Merritt Johnson was born in West Baltimore and spent her childhood navigating between trees, tarps and concrete. She earned her BFA from Carnegie Mellon University and her MFA from Massachusetts College of Art.  For over a decade her work has navigated the spaces between bodies and the body politic, land and culture by making reflectors, refractors, and vision shifters to look at and through puddles of blood and oil, streams of salt water, plastic tarps, chain link fences, cloud cover, tree lines, clear cuts, shell, bone, skin and hair.  She has seen and felt tongues and knives cut the intersections of land, culture, sex, and body; in response she weaves together seen and unseen to build connection and vision. Johnson exposes not-seeing or listening as a route to becoming fearful and dangerous. She casts, weaves, draws, beads, paints, carves, performs, films, and projects into and out of how we are, to tell stories, asking how we could be, suggesting ways to see.