Kyla Bourgh

Comforting Illusions

June 2024 - September 2024

Location

Vancouver

Kyla Bourgh is a graduate of the Master of Visual Arts program at Emily Carr University of Art and Design. She has worked as an arts educator in the lower mainland for the past 20+ years and continues to be optimistic and engaged in her teaching practice. Bourgh’s work fuses her writing and visual arts practices to create artwork with a deep thread of social engagement and examination of trust. Her work often moves between the tactile and the performative. She organizes events that bring people together to facilitate conversations around themes of cultural location and belonging amongst other developing themes. Her practice encourages facility and insight through learning by working with often uncomfortable topics. Her work also encourages insight by highlighting perspectives about gender and racial inequality. She lives and works in Vancouver.

Artist statement

This portrait series captures subjects in a liminal moment during conversations with the artist prompted by the theme, Comforting Illusions. The subjects are still, in a moment between dynamic and active postures, sharing their stories and perspectives.

Ultimately, this series is an exploration into how deep, internal processes like psychology and memory are reflected on an individual’s face. The piece acts as a portal that invites introspection and reflection of our subconscious in stillness.

A GIF rotating through all the portraits of people with their eyes closed, which are all painted in different shades of blue.

A center close-up of the wall, displaying a section of the 51 blue portraits of people with their eyes closed.

A close-up of the wall, displaying a section of the 51 blue portraits of people with their eyes closed.

A greater part of my practice engages with trust, while inquiring about the reliability of narrative. My work often does not present a single, fixed story; rather, it embraces layered perspectives, intersecting dialogues, and open-ended conclusions. In the “Comforting Illusions” series, I observe people within the liminal space created through conversation and discourse. I take an image of them in the moment and render them in a captivating, vulnerable yet visually engaging manner. They remain in dynamic, active postures, caught mid-thought as they share their perspectives.

I am also interested in how internal aspects like psychology and memory are expressed through drawing, mark-making and painting and other more generative practices like collage, writing and storytelling. I continue to uncover and excavate personal and interconnected world narrative through my art practice.

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