Regarding the Emerald Queendom

A review of Tammy Salzl's exhibition "Emerald Queendom", shown at Harcourt House Artist Run Centre April 30-July 10, 2021

Note from the author: This essay was written as a commission in March 2021 for Tammy Salzl’s then-upcoming exhibition brochure. It was not used in the final brochure, but permission was given by the artist to publish this elsewhere.

Tammy Salzl, “Emerald Queendom” (detail), 2021. Mixed media, video and sound (photo by aAron Munson)

Emerald Queendom transports the visitor into a post-human fairy world, where the world has begun to heal.

Magic is abundant and undomesticated, defined by connection, intimacy, and openness. The concept of fairies is shared by cultures all around the globe, though known by different names- such as fae or fair folk (English), sídhe (Irish) aziza (African), mogwai (Chinese), yaksha (Hindu/Buddhist), elves (Germanic), feufollet (Cajun), nymphs and satyrs (Greek), chaneques (southeast Mexico), or menehune (Hawaii). All of these are mischievous nature spirits. They watch you when you are alone. They like to mess with humans for fun. What kind of chaos would they get into without us?

Fairies are traditionally equated with wild magic. They are chaotic and unpredictable, sometimes lovable, always mischievous. In Europe, the lesson has been passed down over generations: never piss off the fairies. “The Fair Folk are sociopaths. [...] They are ruled by an incomprehensible sense of ethics and an interest in human agony” (Wrigley, 2015).

For whatever reason, fairies in Euro-settler culture have become painfully domesticated. Artists like Cicely Mary Barker and Amy Brown portray fairies as lanky children or women with butterfly wings, more intimately connected to nature than their human counterparts. Their fairies are demure, delicate, soft, feminine, beautiful. Salzl’s fairies are not like that at all. Salzl’s fairies are certainly delicate and feminine, with dainty limbs and vibrant flower heads, hands, and feet. They’re decidedly not innocent. They’re hypersexualized with large bums, bright nipples, and full lips. Their gender is feminine but indeterminate, as they all have flat chests and sometimes large bellies and flower genitalia. They’re all very active. They’re engaged with each other and the world around them. They’re pissing, fucking, snoring, languishing, cradling, dancing, pulling, stealing, eating, laughing, moaning. There is an air of vulnerability in how delicate and receptive they are, but as Salzl reminds us, delicate doesn’t mean innocent.

Tammy Salzl might be a fae. She confessed that many of the rocks collected for the fairy’s environment were stolen on night walks from bourgeois neighbours’ yards. Other things like branches, wasp nests, deer antlers, leaves have been accumulated over time from walks in the ravines of Edmonton. But the fairies don’t live in a world like we would find here. Theirs is a lush dream world, frozen in lively activity. The puddles and lakes they play around are animated through videos taken by Salzl. Koi fish swim around a stick-haired fairy cradling a bee and wearing socks she made from remnants of the human world. An orange iris-haired fairy looks up at us awkwardly from her stolen-egg meal. A blue-rose-headed fairy languishes on a rock, surrounded by insects. Two fairies, one blue-flower-headed and one yellow-flower-headed, engage in blissful coitus. A pink sweet-pea fairy rides the back of their friend, an amethyst fairy. Softness and hardness blend together harmoniously.

Visitors are able to access this fairy world by walking around five tables. Forest paintings on the walls immerse the visitor in the fairy world more fully. While the fairies were created in isolation and just for fun, Salzl has found ways to collaborate with fellow creatives. In response to her process, composer Greg Mulyk created an evolving soundtrack with randomized layers of sound to accompany the installation. It will not sound the same way twice!

Over the last couple of years, Salzl has been branching out from her large scale paintings and into sculpture and video work. This work retains its ties to her previous work through similar colour palette, subject matter, and Salzl’s acceptance of process and gritty textures in her work. Salzl’s work is consistently informed by mythology and culture, critical feminism, bodies, concepts of beauty, politics, technology, environmentalism, ecology, and evolution. This work is unusual in her personal connection to the sculptures. Salzl says the fairies each have different personalities and she feels the need to apologize if she bumps one! 

The exhibition’s title is inspired by bees and by Christine de Pizan’s richly illustrated manuscript The Book of the City of Ladies, written in 1405. De Pizan was one of the first female authors to make a living from her work, and this particular title explores aspects of feminism that are surprisingly relevant in our contemporary context. Salzl is also inspired by Donna Haraway’s feminist writings about how to live on a dying planet. Questions about beauty, femininity, connection, and subversion weave together in this fairy world, not in a hierarchical way, but certainly in a storytelling way. The work can be viewed as critically or as whimsically as one wishes.

Relevant Links:

About the artist, Tammy Salzl
https://www.tammysalzl.com/index.html

Review from Harcourt House
https://harcourthouse.ab.ca/tammy-salzl-2/

Review from Canadian Art
https://canadianart.ca/?agenda=emerald-queendom/

Review from Galleries West
https://www.gallerieswest.ca/magazine/stories/emerald-queendom/