Tim Whiten
Description
Tim Whiten (b.1941) is one of Canada's most revered artists, renowned for his innovative drawings, performance installations, and sculptural objects. His celebrated works engage with mysticism, ritual, alchemy, and myth to explore the depths of the human experience.
Born in a poor suburb near Detroit, Whiten overcame oppressive economic and social conditions to become an award-winning artist and educator. He experienced firsthand the impact of the Vietnam War, in which he served, and the violence, racial segregation, and riots at the height of the civil rights movement. Immigrating to Canada in 1968, Whiten became a founding member of York University's Faculty of Fine Arts, where he taught for close to forty years, influencing and inspiring generations of Canadian artists.
In Tim Whiten: Life & Work, author Carolyn Bell Farrell traces the artist's trajectory from his earliest years growing up in Inkster, Michigan, to his critical success in the art world, including winning the Gershon Iskowitz Prize at the AGO in 2022 and a Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts for Artistic Achievement in 2023. Through the author's extensive research and dialogues with the artist and others in his circle, Bell Farrell tells the remarkable story of how Whiten's expansive practice has altered the landscape of contemporary art in Canada.
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Carolyn Bell Farrell is an independent curator and writer living in London, Ontario. Since 1990, she has curated more than sixty exhibitions of contemporary Canadian art, working with renowned Canadian artists including Isaac Applebaum, Sarindar Dhaliwal, June Clark, Tim Whiten, and Rafael Goldchain, among others. Over the last four decades, she has worked as an educator, curator, and director in both public art galleries and artist-run centres, including Mercer Union, Koffler Gallery and, most recently, the MacLaren Art Centre in Barrie, where she was the Executive Director from 2007 to 2020.