Jillian Louise Cote

Sculpture

My practice explores the anomalies that interrupt our quotidian existence and inhabit our myths and stories - rarely seen creatures, miraculous coincidences, flying saucers in the sky, ad infinitum. These occurrences are abject, existing in the blur between fiction and reality. My work is situated within this void in an effort to understand my own desire for escapism while drawing on stories about the anomalous experiences of others. I identify myself with the abject in these stories as I navigate the various facets of my identity that do not feel at home under pre-existing identifying labels. Using the anthropomorphization of the art object and the suspension of disbelief I create moments of fantasy in the mundane and invite the viewer into the world I have created.

These notions realize themselves through a variety of traditional handicrafts, such as papier mache and jewellery making. These materials and processes are found in common everyday items, emphasizing the immediate and ever-present nature of my subject matter. My work seeks to establish an immersive space, one in which theatricality engenders an arena for myth and magic to thrive, while material flaws reveal the contingency and precariousness of these belief systems.

Through explorations of the mythical I aim to carve out a place within established norms and rigid definitions, reveling in the strangeness that exists in ambiguity to look at alternate paths of existence and new trajectories of being,. I blur the space between storytelling and everyday life to show that myth saturates our existence.