Wendy Trusler is an interdisciplinary artist, designer and writer who creates site-responsive installations that incorporate drawing, painting, text, sculpture, performance, and film.
Much of her work examines the roles that symbol and language play in coding memory, and the ways in which recollections are organized into what we understand as history. Shaped by the experience of having lived in isolation in wild places, ideas around ecology, continuity and regeneration play out in her material choices and the physicality of her work, as well as how it brings people together.
“Trusler presents the viewer with tools, charts, anatomies… maps for survival, orientation, hunting and healing.” — Maralynn Cherry, Curator
Recent projects include The Antarctic Book of Cooking and Cleaning (2015 & 2013); Collective Vision, an on-going curatorial project in the Mental Health Services Department of a hospital and Voices at Hand, an archival-oriented performance piece that has been mounted in nine venues across Ontario and reached audiences in 26 countries.
Trusler’s design practice, ReWorks, traces a similar orbit to her artistic impulses. She explores the potential inherent within found materials and reclaimed objects in creating design pieces (furniture and handmade works) that have the feel of contemporary antiques—pieces that are rustic, warm and refined.
She makes her home in Peterborough, Canada.
