Joyce Wieland

Joyce Wieland (1931-1998), Canadian artist whose paintings, assemblages, quilts, and motion pictures explore themes of feminism and Canadian nationalism. Born in Toronto, Canada, Wieland studied commercial art from 1944 to 1948 at the Central Technical School in Toronto, and in 1954 she began working at a small Toronto film company.

Her paintings of the early 1960s, large, color-stained canvases, explored the theme of female sexuality, and were controversial for their feminist perspective. In the assemblage Reason over Passion (1968, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Canada), Wieland utilized quilting and embroidery, crafts traditionally performed by women, prefiguring similar feminist strategies used by American artist Judy Chicago in her work The Dinner Party (1974-1979, collection of Judy Chicago).

Wieland and her husband, Canadian artist Michael Snow, lived in New York City from 1962 to 1971. While there she became increasingly interested in the history, ecology, and culture of Canada, and began producing such works as Patriotism (1966-1967, private collection), an assemblage focusing on Canadian political life.

Much of Wieland’s art relates to her interest in film. In the painting Tragedy in the Air, or Plane Crash (1963, Vancouver Art Gallery, Canada), a series of narrative frames depict an airplane crash as if they were single frames of a film. O Canada Animation (1970, private collection) consists of a series of embroidered lips, forming the words to the Canadian national anthem. Wieland produced films starting in 1958, many of them telling stories of Canadians. Her first feature-length film, The Far Shore (1976), tells about the life and legend of Canadian painter, Tom Thomson.

Wieland was the first living Canadian woman to have been honored with a one-person exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. The exhibit, held in 1971, was entitled True Patriot Love. In 1983 the Canadian government awarded her the Order of Canada. She died from Alzheimer’s disease in 1998.