Repository Number
en-ca SC0215-LNI-PH-1
Location
en-ca Newnham - Building D - Level 2 - Hallway right of D2000
Artist
en-ca Nina LevittNina Levitt
Title
en-ca Study for Nurses
Date
en-ca 2006
Medium
en-ca Photography
Technique
en-ca Inkjet print
Dimensions
en-ca 33 x 48 cm
Artist's Statement
en-ca “My work deals with the changes in nursing and how the social construction of what nursing is has evolved,” said Levitt. “These images show nothing of illness and mortality. The romanticized drama displayed in the books is echoed by the glamorous, stylized school portraits. Both reflect the prevalent stereotypes about nursing that existed in the 1960s. When you look at them, you don’t recognize today’s nurses.

For the past thirty years I have been working in photography, installation and video. My practice examines the representation of women in popular culture and often relies on the recovery and manipulation of existing images and texts. My work has been shown extensively in Canada, and in several shows in the UK and the US, and has been widely published and reviewed including feature articles in Parachute #100 and Canadian Art. Notable exhibitions include Otherwordly, “The Uncanny: Experiments in Cyborg Culture” (Vancouver Art Gallery) and “Little Breeze” at the Doris McCarthy Gallery, University of Toronto Scarborough.

Between 2001-2008 I researched and produced three artworks focused on the representation of women spies during WWII. I received a prestigious SSHRC Research Creation Grant that allowed me to produced two of these shows. THIN AIR, the second in a trilogy of shows on this subject was shown at the Koffler Gallery in Toronto in March 2008. The third work was exhibited at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa in November 2009. A catalogue of these works was published by the galleries and is available at ABC Art Books. In November 2008, “APPROACHING HISTORIES: Intersections of history, visual art and literature” Symposium was held at the RMG with presentations by artist John Greyson, Prof. Shelly Hornstein, author Helen Humphreys and Nina Levitt.”
en-ca Nina Levitt
Description
en-ca "Levitt was struck by the lack of racial diversity in the images. “All the women pictured on the covers of pulp novels are white, and often blonde and blue-eyed,” she said. “The school portraits are likewise predominately white.

In 2011, I was commissioned to produce new work in celebration of the 100th anniversary of Women’s College Hospital in Toronto, based on research I conducted over several months in the hospital’s Archives. These photographs of the open pages of WCH student yearbooks reflect the racial and gender conformity of nursing at that time, and thus point to some of important social changes that have since taken place in the profession.

When these works were first shown in the exhibition Being She: The Culture of Women’s Health and Health Care Through the Lens of Wholeness (Gladstone Hotel, Toronto) I commissioned Andrea Fatona to write an essay about the absence of women of colour from nursing to accompany my work."
en-ca Nina Levitt
Provenance
en-ca Purchased from Gallery TPW.
Inscription
en-ca No signature
Item sets
Seneca Art