Intestinal fortitude

"A lot of my work explores body vulnerabilities and fears," says artist Mary-Anne Wensley. (Top photo, Bruce Bottomley)

The orange-yellow glow shines through the translucent walls of the intimate shed, sprinkling light on the intricately tied nets that surround it. In the corners of the room are small groupings of flowers, growing through cracks in the walls like weeds. The collective effect is beautiful, sure, but also quite claustrophobic and tense, as if there’s something oddly insecure about it.

Maybe it’s the fact that the creation, titled inescapable shelter, is entirely made out of pig intestines.

Artist Mary-Anne Wensley won’t deny that there’s something slightly disgusting about using pig innards as art, but that’s precisely the point.

“A lot of my work explores body vulnerabilities and fears, and pig intestines, which are actually genetically quite close to human, convey these ideas quite directly for me,” explains Ms. Wensley, who works as a part-time administrative assistant in Dalhousie’s Department of Industrial Engineering. “It’s very beautiful, but has a grotesque quality too. It repulses you at the same time as it invites you in.”

She first started using the material when she was a student at the Ontario College of Art and Design. For inescapable shelter, she made regular trips to Brothers’ Meats in Halifax to purchase supplies. Her process entailed hanging, inflating and drying the casings, then ironing folding and gluing them into over 2,700 rectangular bricks for the structure itself.  The nets were constructed from sections of intestine dried on waxed paper then tied together with linen thread.

“In part, it symbolizes the body as a shelter,” she says, explaining some of the motivation behind her creation. “But, at times, the body can alternatively feel like a prison, which is why the structure evokes a sense of tension in many people.”

Those who view the art installation are also left with a sense of the sheer volume of work involved in its creation. inescapable shelter took almost a year to complete to its current state, with Ms. Wensley estimating that she put 30 to 40 hours of work into it each week. And she’s not done yet: she hopes to add more imposing nets hanging over the structure, and plans to also incorporate words at some point.

In the meantime, inescapable shelter can be viewed until April 11 at the Saint Mary’s University Art Gallery. Ms. Wensley will be hosting an artist talk and catalogue launch this Thursday at 8 p.m.