{"id":636995,"date":"2026-04-29T19:48:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-29T19:48:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/636995\/"},"modified":"2026-04-29T19:48:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T19:48:13","slug":"for-this-artist-identity-is-like-an-unfinished-garment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/636995\/","title":{"rendered":"For this artist, identity is like an unfinished garment"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kyle Alden Martens<\/a> creates sculptures of familiar garments that smoothly evade expectation. Earlier this month, Split Hairs, a solo exhibition by Martens, opened at \u00c9cart<\/a> in Rouyn-Noranda, Que.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There, snakeskin knee-high boot-sculptures are suspended from an aluminum rod running the length of the gallery. Wrist watches with fogged clockfaces and periwinkle straps so long they become ribbons drip from the toes. Along another aluminum rod, dark boots and suit jackets sewn flat into two-dimensional shadows of their former selves hang, and loose threads and vintage scissors dangle. A trio of crimson boots point their stiletto heels toward the ceiling.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAt first glance, we think we recognize a garment, an accessory, something intimate and everyday, but these forms quickly become ambiguous, almost elusive,\u201d says \u00c9cart General and Artistic Director Audr\u00e9e Juteau. \u201cThat ambiguity opens up a very rich space for reflection, particularly around questions of gender, orientation and social norms. This refusal of a fixed form or a single interpretation resonates strongly with queer lived experiences, where identities and temporalities don\u2019t necessarily follow linear or closed structures.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAs an artist-run centre,\u201d Juteau continues, \u201cwe support practices that experiment, that shift frameworks, and that propose different ways of inhabiting the world \u2014 which is very much what Kyle\u2019s work does.\u201d<\/p>\n

Martens, who lives in Montreal and was born in Saskatchewan, works in sculpture, installation, performance and video. He is a highly decorated visual artist, recognized with numerous fellowships, grants and honours. For more than a decade, he has exhibited across North America.<\/p>\n

I met Martens this winter while we were both at Est-Nord-Est Residency<\/a> in Saint-Jean-Port-Joli, Que. For eight weeks, we worked parallel to each other and our fellow residents. When the work was done for the day, we rearranged the furniture to project films, read by the woodburning fireplace, and strolled \u2014 or rather slid \u2014 on the icy street shoulder to the St. Lawrence River.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the studio, Martens, having just completed the pieces for Split Hairs, was reflecting on this body of work and where to head next. One evening, we sat down to chat about the slipping, shifting nature of Split Hairs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"AKyle Alden Martens is a Montreal-based visual artist who works in sculpture, installation, performance and video. (B. Brookbank)<\/p>\n

Ashley Diana Culver: You lent me a paperback copy of Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, and I know you read Orlando. What drew you to Virginia Woolf’s work?<\/p>\n

Kyle Alden Martens: I’m spoiled in the way that my partner reads a lot, and they buy books I wouldn’t necessarily find on my own. I was sniffing through a pile of books, and Orlando caught my eye. In some ways, it’s a very special book, but also deeply flawed in a lot of ways.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When did you read Orlando in relation to the process of making this exhibition?<\/p>\n

Well, it’s not really a reference so much in the show. It was something happening in tandem. I read the first chapter and really liked something that was said about clothing, and then, I put the book down for two months.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When I was away at [the Doris McCarthy Artist-in-Residence Program] in Toronto, I started reading it again. I met someone there: a professor who exclusively taught Virginia Woolf. She was one of my walking buddies. I told her I was going to read Jacob’s Room, and she highlighted a section that I might have skipped over. It was her favorite line. She quoted it to me on a walk; it was about your position in the world, and how, depending where you’re sat in an auditorium, it’ll shift your view of what’s happening as a metaphor for life.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"InInstallation view of the title artwork, Split Hairs, from the exhibition Split Hairs by Kyle Alden Martens at Diagonale in Montreal. (Michael Patten)<\/p>\n

This shifting seems related to the scale of the work in the exhibition. You’ve expanded and stretched the objects: the boots and the glove and the watch straps. Can you tell me what this does for you?<\/p>\n

A lot of my previous work was more delicate in scale. So you would crouch and tower over it. I was wanting to shift that relationship. So this stretching of an object, it starts to take on the presence of a body in the room.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I also like that it’s showing an impossible body. Imagining trying to wear it, thinking of sliding a boot on becomes this very exaggerated gesture of dressing or putting on clothes or the sculptures to your particular body.<\/p>\n

But they’re my size \u2013 my hands or my feet \u2013 in whatever aspect that’s held true to the form.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"TheDetail of the installation Hands by Kyle Alden Martens from the exhibition Split Hairs at Diagonale in Montreal. (Michael Patten)<\/p>\n

Some elements are reoccurring from your past work, such as the watches and the thimbles. Can you tell me about those?\u00a0<\/p>\n

I was doing a lot of projects before that were messing around with the functions of jewelry. A number of pieces I was using watches in less altered states; they were carved into shoes. I was thinking about family or a loved one or lover, and what’s passed down. How are these things showcased or kept close or hidden?\u00a0<\/p>\n

I wasn’t necessarily engaging with time. A watch: It’s jewelry, but it is a way to measure time, which led me to start sandblasting [the clockface] now, so that it didn’t have its function. It was removed from the logic of measuring.\u00a0<\/p>\n

How the watches are attached to the boots here it seems like the watches are slipping or sliding, or some action is frozen. It is this way of showing fluidity of time, and about how someone might change throughout their lifetime. And for queer people, it works in many different ways. Well, for a lot of people it does. There’s not necessarily a timeline that’s clear, but there’s these moments that happen later in life, or repeated or this disruption of time that feels very queer to me, at least I see it represented in friends and in my own life. Like finding your place later in life, then maybe that shifts again, or making choices towards one way of representing yourself but then, it shifts back again. Of this timeline that\u2019s broken.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Relatable. And the thimbles?<\/p>\n

I was wanting to have the space to find something beautiful in the process of making, so things from my studio started to slip into the work, like scissors and thimbles.<\/p>\n

The thimbles are hammered flat, so they disappear from their objectness and become decorative.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It’s also a reference to this artist whose work I’m looking at a lot, named Jannis Kounellis. He was using poured metal as this way of pinning down coats in his sculpture practice. There’s this masculine way of working that the dominance becomes about power over the objects he’s working with. I’m curious about referencing my own work, where it’s about intimacy. So it’s a reference to him, but it’s softened.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"TheDetail of Splitting by Kyle Alden Martens from the exhibition Split Hairs at Diagonale in Montreal. (B. Brookbank)<\/p>\n

The construction is undone with the threads loose and some of the soles of the shoes flapping open. What do you hope that the viewers get with this?<\/p>\n

It is in this state of becoming or unbecoming. You don’t know if it’s been made or if it’s being taken apart. Depending on how someone comes to my work, it might seem all of the objects are pre-existing and that I’m taking them apart. Or for folks who can see that they’re constructed from the ground up, it seems they’re not quite at this endpoint when it becomes real clothing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For folks who sew, there’s this step of finishing a thread that’s left open-ended. There\u2019s a lot of threads still, so maybe there\u2019s another decision to be made, or something might be changed, something\u2019s being tailored still.<\/p>\n

Tell me about the title \u201cSplit Hairs\u201d?\u00a0<\/p>\n

I really like a title that doesn’t nail down the work, but instead complicates it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The work is a lot about this push and pull of this threshold. I guess like splitting hairs is arguing about the same thing, or an argument that can\u2019t end, or it’s like never-ending.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Split hairs could be an object, but it also talks about process.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Also, it hints that there’s horse hair hidden in all of the heels in the show. I think that it’s perhaps felt, but it’s not visible at all. And so the title kind of lets you get a little closer, but it doesn’t solve anything.<\/p>\n

Kyle Alden Martens: Split Hairs<\/a> runs through June 14 at \u00c9cart in Rouyn-Noranda, Que. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kyle Alden Martens creates sculptures of familiar garments that smoothly evade expectation. Earlier this month, Split Hairs, a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":636996,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[76,354,355,49,48,356,75],"class_list":["post-636995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-design","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=636995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636995\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/636996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=636995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=636995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=636995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}