Vera Frenkel facts for kids

Vera Frenkel (born November 10, 1938) is a Canadian artist who creates many different kinds of art. She lives in Toronto, Canada. Her art includes installations (art you can walk through), videos, performances, and digital projects.

Vera Frenkel's art often explores big ideas. She looks at how people move from one country to another and what that feels like. She also explores how we learn and remember things about our culture, and how rules and systems affect our lives.

Vera Frenkel was born in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia. She spent her childhood in England and then moved to Canada as an adult. She studied Fine Arts at McGill University and graduated in 1959. She continued her art studies in Montreal with famous artists like Arthur Lismer.

Since the early 1970s, Vera Frenkel has shown her art in many places. Her work has been seen in Canada and all over the world. Some famous places include the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Biennale di Venezia in Italy.

What are Vera Frenkel's Major Exhibitions?

Vera Frenkel has had many important art shows where her work was featured alone. These are called solo exhibitions. One show was called Likely Stories: Text/Image/Sound Works for Video and Installation in Kingston, Ontario, in 1982.

Another big show was from the Transit Bar, which traveled to different museums in the 1990s. It was shown at The Power Plant in Toronto and the National Gallery of Canada.

More recently, in 2014, the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art in Toronto held a special exhibition called Ways of Telling. This show displayed Vera Frenkel's art from the 1970s all the way to her newer pieces. It included works like ONCE NEAR WATER: Notes from the Scaffolding Archive (2008) and The Blue Train (2012–2014).

Vera Frenkel has also been part of many group exhibitions with other artists. These include OKanada in Berlin, Germany (1982–83) and Rebel Girls: A Survey of Canadian Feminist Videotapes 1974-1988 at the National Gallery of Canada (1989). Her work ...from the Transit Bar was also part of the famous Documenta IX exhibition in Germany in 1992.

What Kind of Art Does Vera Frenkel Create?

Vera Frenkel is known for being a pioneer in using new technologies in her art. In 1974, she created a piece called String Games: Improvisations for Inter-City Video. This was the first artwork in Canada to use telecommunications, which means it used technology to connect people over distances. It was an early example of what we now call Internet art.

One of her most famous works is ...from the Transit Bar (1992). This is a large art installation that includes a working bar! Video screens show people telling their personal stories. These stories are about things like being an exile (someone forced to leave their home), how language changes when you translate it, and moving between different cultures. This artwork was created with the National Gallery of Canada and The Power Plant art gallery. It was first shown in Germany and has been shown again in Canada.

Another important video artwork by Frenkel is ONCE NEAR WATER: Notes from the Scaffolding Archive (2008). This video is about a city that has lost its connection to its lake. She uses scaffolding (the temporary structures used in construction) as a symbol. It represents both hopes for the future and things that have been lost. The video begins by saying, "This report is about a lake, and about longing. Also about greed, and about ways of bearing witness. I don't know the whole story, one never does."

What Awards Has Vera Frenkel Won?

Vera Frenkel has received many important awards for her art. In 1989, she won the Molson Prize from the Canada Council. She also received the Toronto Arts Foundation Visual Arts Award in 1994 and the Gershon Iskowitz Prize in 1993.

In 2005, she was given the Governor General's Awards in Visual and Media Arts. This is one of the highest honors for artists in Canada. She has also received special honorary doctorates from art schools like the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (1996) and the Emily Carr Institute (2004). She is a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts and was inducted into the Royal Society of Canada in 2006.