The Critic/Don’t Think about the White Polar Bear by Fausta Facciponte

Fausta graduated from the University of Toronto in 1990, and received her MFA from Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 2016. Fausta, a contemporary visual artist, engages the still-life genre through the medium of photography using a variety of photographic techniques that include both analog film and digital processes. Her recent series comprise large-scale portraits of weird, child-adult hybrid dolls from the 1940s, 50s and 60s, through to images of Boschian massings of ceramic figurines caught in some murky underwater hell.

She has exhibited her artwork throughout North America, Latin America and Asia, and her photographs are in the collections of the McMaster Museum of Art, the Peel Art Gallery Museum + Archives, and the Art Gallery of Mississauga. Fausta is part of a publication with the John Hopkins University of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland - a project that engaged artists with scientists in researching the destructive power of addiction and the regenerative power of recovery. Her work is also part of MAPS, Maltreatment and Adolescent Pathways – a project co-organized by the McMaster Museum of Art and the School of Nursing at McMaster; the project teaches medical students visual literacy using artwork, in order to improve their observational skills to aid in the detection of child maltreatment.

Fausta’s work is represented by the prestigious Stephen Bulger Gallery in Toronto. She has recently been selected as a finalist for the 2018 K.M. Hunter Artist Award through the Ontario Arts Council. Recipients are recommended for this award by Ontario Arts Council jurors.

Fausta work also includes community service: she is the founder of A Month of Photography, the Region of Peel’s annual September photo festival; she served as the festival’s Project Coordinator from 2005-2009.

Artist CV (PDF)
Artist Bio (PDF)
Reliable Statement (PDF)
Sleepy Eyes Statement (PDF)

Contact Photography Festival - 25 can't-miss shows (PDF) - NOW, May 2014

Sleepy Eyes (PDF) - Globe and Mail, September 2011

Sleepy Eyes (PDF) - Toronto Life, September 2011

The Nature of Existence (PDF) - Carousel, 2011

Fausta Facciponte Transforms Yesterday's Objects (PDF) - Eyes In