legs: a collaborative exhibition by Christine Fellows, Chantel Mierau, Jennifer Still

Gallery 1C03, the campus art gallery of The University of Winnipeg, is pleased to present the Canadian premiere of the award-winning short film, legs.

legs is elegy. A poem written with the full length of the body.

Winnipeg artists Christine Fellows (music/sound/stop-motion), Chantel Mierau (costume/video) and Jennifer Still (poet) work in stride with life’s undoings—snapped clotheslines, drained swimming pools, shimmering nylon runs—to translate Still’s poem into a video installation. In the process, they discover what falls away is not necessarily gone.

Jennifer Still: “Embodying my poem with Christine and Chantel expands my sense of voice into its fullest being: swimming the poem, singing the poem, wearing it! Our process shows me how a poem can live and be lived: inside and outside all at once, hovering just above and below the furling, unfurling, crumpling page.”

“legs create[s] a gap that connects several generations of women… The film distinguishes itself through its unique object creations and an extraordinary timing that often borders on the absurd. Colorful mourning in glitter. What’s left when the body’s gone? Stockings.” 

–Jury statement from the ZEBRA International Poetry Film Festival (Berlin), where legs was awarded the 2023 Ritter Sport Film Award

legs was created in the Red River Valley on Treaty One Territory, Winnipeg, Manitoba, and Treaty Three Territory, Pine Falls, Manitoba, with generous grant awards from the Canada Council for the Arts and Manitoba Arts Council.

The exhibition program will feature a discussion with the artists and a hands-on poetry workshop that invites participants to create their own unique, wearable “care tag” poem.

legs opens with a public reception on November 23, 2023 from 4:00 – 6:00 pm.
Regular gallery hours are weekdays 12:00 – 4:00 pm from Nov 23, 2023 until Feb 16, 2024. We will be closed December 22, 2023 until January 7, 2024. Admission is free.