Flora Shum: RLPA2011THF – Don Phillips Scholarship Exhibition

Installation view of RLPA2011THF, by Flora Shum

Installation view of RLPA2011THF, by Flora Shum

Installation view of RLPA2011THF, by Flora Shum

Installation view of RLPA2011THF, by Flora Shum

Installation view of RLPA2011THF, by Flora Shum

Installation view of RLPA2011THF, by Flora Shum


Project Space
Flora Shum: RLPA2011THF – Don Phillips Scholarship Exhibition

RLPA2011THF (an acronym for The Rules of Life – Project A: To Have Face, 2011) explores identity and the need to save face and conceal personal weakness. The work reflects the artist’s compulsion to dissect identity, carefully angling a scalpel and shaving off a slice, sticking it between glass, and sliding it under a microscope. Of course, while science allows one to split something open and magnify it to find answers that are understood as facts, in matters of identity we are left to explore the confusion of boundaries we are given, the expectations of others and of oneself, the hyper scramble to always advance, and the desperation of finding a sense of belonging. RLPA2011THF is a series of etchings—exploring the possibilities, blurring the boundaries, creating new bodies, new bones, new organs, new tissues, new cells, inserting information into nuclei. The idea is to create, alter, clone and construct new super-cyborgs. Technology fixing what technology created. Here are the prototypes, the possible organs, please find the instruction manual enclosed. Order in multiples: it’s always good to have back-ups. Thus we have The Rules of Life – Project A: To Have Face, 2011 (RLPA2011THF).

Flora Shum (Don Phillips Scholar) graduated from the Ontario College of Art and Design with a BFA in Printmaking. She has participated in several shows, art fairs, print exchanges and collaborations. Her work explores themes of a cyborg society, the use of landmarks and landscapes with which to define and identify, the structure of values and the deconstruction and reconstruction of society. Her work incorporates various aspects of printmaking and papermaking, creating installations out of the prints and materials themselves.