She
About the Artist
ELINOR WHIDDEN is a Settler of British, Irish, Scottish and Huguenot descent. (That’s a Protestant French person persecuted for not being Catholic. Most converted or fled as refugees, like her ancestor Jean Geunon who ended up in Flushing, Long Island in 1657.) She has always considered herself a Heinz 57 of European flavours, but most closely identifies with the British flavour because of her Grammie, Monty Python, and the family tradition of stifling emotions with dry humour.
Whidden’s connection to territory is vast and colonial. It primarily entails adventurous exploration and property ownership. Her most fond connection is to the landscape of the barrens in the Yukon and NWT where she spent many summers canoeing: usually for 50 days at a stretch. She also thinks often of Halifax and Wolfville, Nova Scotia (Peace and Friendship Treaty territory) where she went to art school, and where her parents now live. Elinor currently walks, grocery shops and plays hockey in her hometown Toronto, part of the Dish With One Spoon Territory. Toronto is the traditional territory of the Wendat, Haudenosaunee, and Anishinaabe peoples. The Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation are the current treaty land holders through the Toronto Purchase settlement in 2010.
Artist Elinor Whidden uses humour, heroics and history to critique contemporary car culture. Dressed as a modern-day Voyageur she turns old cars into canoes, knapsacks, snowshoes, walking sticks and other modes of transportation used during the opening of the Western Frontier. These objects are then portaged, dragged, or carried along early fur trade routes. During these car-carrying performances, the waterways and trade routes of this historic period stand in as the forefathers to our current system of highways, freeways and over-passes. By re-enacting myths about the Western Frontier Whidden looks at the way our colonial history is repeated in our love of the automobile and the infrastructure that supports it. While her adventures are often ridiculous and futile, Whidden uses the physical power of the human body to question our obsession with the daily commute.