Critical Writing Index

Boundary Blurrer: An Interview with Vera Frenkel

by Robert Enright

Border Crossings, May 2007, v. 26, no. 102, pp. 42-55

This interview with Vera Frenkel delves into the personal and professional impetus for her impressive depth of work. Her focus on the relationship between reality and fantasy, and life and art is discussed and analyzed in regards to her familial history. This piece is both biographical and investigative, as it finds individual rationale for her artwork. Her family’s dramatic and fortunate escape from Nazi terror has instilled the narrative and memorial qualities so present in most of her work. The emotional narrative of her birth and early childhood and the longstanding importance of memory clearly have influenced the artist. All aspects of the artist’s creative outlook and personality are explored. The Institute, The Secret Life of Cornelia Lumsden: A Remarkable Story, and Body Missing are discussed in detail. The strength and questioning nature of the artist is presented as a format for her inquisitive examination of culture, boundaries, and psychoanalytical complexities.

ITEM 2007.045 – available for viewing in the Research Centre

Videos, Artworks and Artists Cited

The Institute (or what we do for love)Vera Frenkel

Edmund Wilson

Robert Rauschenberg

Robert Kroetsch

Diana Nemiroff

Marquita Crevier

Leonard Cohen

John Lyman

A.M. Klein

David Rokeby

Ad Reinhardt

Arthur Lismer

Body MissingVera Frenkel

The Secret Life of Cornelia Lumsden: A Remarkable StoryVera Frenkel