Clare Samuel

Exploring the ways we are connected and divided from each other, Samuel’s work uses expanded forms of portraiture. In recent series the artist has examined the dynamics between women, and between her family and homeland of Northern Ireland. Her current project is a portrait of her relationship with her father, who lived with schizophrenia and died in 2018.

Art gallery display with various photographs and a television screen on a wall, and a table with rocks on a cloth.
Five black rocks on a white cloth placed on a red background.
Woman with short brown hair wearing a floral blouse, with a supportive hand on her shoulder; background includes a dresser and purple wall.
Black and white portrait of an unknown 19th-century man with white hair, wearing formal clothing, framed in an oval border.
Hand holding a photo album with a picture of a person holding a baby, surrounded by hair strands.
Inverted color image of a brick building façade with arched windows and vertical pipes.
Empty room with dirty carpet, single light bulb, large window, wall heater, shelves, and scattered debris on the floor.

  • Installation view of Us (& It) in [De] / [Re] Constructing Place at The Varley Gallery of Markham, 2021, photo by Toni Hafkensheid.

    Installation view of Five on the Bed and the Little One Said from Us (& It), 2016/2020, photo by Toni Hafkensheid.

    Detail from Us (& It) 2016

    Video stills of Home, from Us (& It) 2020

    Research image, asylum inmate, from Invention of Hysteria by Georges Didi-Huberman

    Detail of Flesh / Blood / Light / Water from Us (& It) 2020

    The Confucian idea that dead parents live on in the hair of their children, from Malcolm, 2022

    Diary from the year before I was born, from Malcolm, 2022

    Hollywell Psychiatric Hospital, from Malcolm, 2009 / 2022

    Patient’s Property from Malcolm, 2022

    Shell I from Malcolm, 2022

    Shell II from Malcolm, 2022

    After Clearing Out the Flat from Malcolm, 2022

Clare Samuel is a visual artist and writer originally from Northern Ireland, now living as a settler in Tkaronto. She holds a BFA from Toronto Metropolitan University and an MFA from Concordia University. Her work focuses on connection and distances between the self and other, as well as notions of social division, borders, and belonging. Spanning mediums such as photography, video, text and installation, her projects are often a dialogue with the idea of portraiture.

Clare has exhibited and screened internationally, most recently at OBORO, The Varley Art Gallery and Belfast Exposed. She teaches at OCADU, Toronto Metropolitan University and University of Toronto. She is a founding member and co-director of Feminist Photography Network, a nexus for research on the relationship between feminism and lens-based media.

CONNECTION