USask visual artist’s online lecture focuses on how Greek mythology influences her practice

A University of Saskatchewan (USask) researcher is discussing her artistic work in an online lecture that will be hosted on the Canadian Institute in Greece (CIG) YouTube channel this month.

Prof. Allyson Glenn, a faculty member in the Department of Art and Art History in USask’s College of Arts and Science, exhibited her painting project Passages in Greece in 2019. Her virtual lecture, Conversations with the Greek Gods of Antiquity, will be featured online from June 1 – 10, 2021. Interviewed by independent curator Dr. Caterina Pizanias (PhD), the lecture will be part of a larger series featuring Canadian researchers.

For Passages, Glenn used myth as a tool to disseminate topics surrounding land, people and sustainability. Exploring an intertwining between ancient stories, archetypes and current events, Glenn and Pizanias examined how the Greek mythological past can inform contemporary issues around sites of resistance expanding on conventional notions of nation, ethnicity, identities, displacement, migration and more.  

Glenn’s current (in progress) series Eclipse explores Greek sculptures, figurines and busts, found beyond Greece. Building on the idea that people brought ancient stories, sacred objects and relics with them, antiquity sculptures were amongst the objects that transcended borders.

In the virtual lecture organized by the CIG, Glenn discusses her artistic practice, the topic of allegory, Greek myth archetypes and sculptures, and provides examples of these from Greece, Great Britain and Italy.

While the COVID-19 pandemic restricts international travel, this first video is part of a larger virtual lecture series featuring Canadian researchers in the areas of archeology, anthropology and antiquity. Launched every two weeks in the summer of 2021, the series will promote outreach to the Greek and Canadian communities. The CIG is a central hub for international collaborative teams, including anthropologists and archeologists carrying out archeological digs in Greece.

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