Linda Duvall

Linda Duvall is a Canadian artist and educator based in Saskatchewan and Toronto. Her social art projects, exhibitions and research have taken up questions of conscience, truth, and the nature of interpersonal relationships, particularly as they are enacted through conversation. Her art employs photography, video, installation, performance art, and community-based research including Internet-based archiving. They often feature invitations for individuals or groups to participate in specific tasks involving conversation or expression. Overall Duvall's work investigates speech acts (such as, confessions, gossip and expressions of regret), the nature of truth, the process of grieving, intimacy and vulnerability. Her solo exhibitions have been hosted by Art Gallery of Hamilton, Dunlop Art Gallery, Art Gallery of Mississauga, Museo Nacional de Arte Moderno Guatemala City, Custom House Gallery Westport Ireland, Box Hotel Gallery Barcelona and Thunder Bay Art Gallery. She has served on a number of boards of artist-run organizations including, Paved Arts, Red Head Gallery, The Photographer's Gallery (now known as PAVED Arts),

Educational Background Linda Duvall studied sociology and English at Carleton University and education at Queen's University.

Artistic Practice Linda Duvall moved with her family from Ontario to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan in 1993, where she taught at the University of Saskatchewan.

Street-involved women are the subject of Living in 10 Easy Lessons (2012, G44 Centre for Contemporary Photography) which Duvall produced in collaboration with artist, Peter Kingstone, and women who they met through Adelaide Resource Centre for Women in Toronto. This work resulted in an exhibition of photo, text and video, as well as an educational materials (posters, brochures) which were distributed throughout the city. A discussion event involving community service providers was organized by the gallery in conjunction with the exhibition. Critical reactions to the project questioned the way the participants, who were visually identifiable in the exhibition and educational materials, were presented as wilfully circulating illicit methods of survival. Published reactions to Living in 10 Easy Lessons and other Duvall works also emphasize the way the speech acts of participants in Duvall's art works disrupt the authority of public and cultural institutions.

Also in 2012, a solo exhibition entitled The Toss (Gallery TPW) took up again Duvall's personal experience with police violence, the media footage of which had been frequently broadcast in local TV advertising and was included in her 2005 work, Lament. For this project, the artist displayed using video footage, her own process of learning the technique of tossing assailants that was used on her by the police, and her own use of the technique in realistically staged scenarios. The new work, In the Hole (2017), invites artists to spend 6 hours a day (for up to three days) in a large hole dug into the earth on her rural Saskatchewan property. At the same time, visitors to the gallery at PAVED Arts in Saskatoon (60 miles away) will view what is captured on the camera installed in the hole.

Publications Duvall, Linda, Peggy Gale, David Garneau, Rubén Gaztambide-Fernández, and musicians. Linda Duvall : Where Were the Mothers? Exhibition catalogue and CD music recording. Mississauga, Ont. : Art Gallery of Mississauga, 2009. Duvall, Linda, Jansma, Linda, and Ring, Dan. Linda Duvall : Enough White Lies to Ice a Wedding Cake. Oshawa, ON: Robert McLaughlin Gallery, 2005.