Clara Laratta

What do you do when your life should be enough but something tells you it isn't? It's easy to change your life when there's a crisis. There's no choice.

It's harder when things are fine. How do you choose to give up what you should be happy with, for something you can't even describe?

The works are a look inside this process, sharing with us what happens when we listen to that voice that tells us that things need to be different. What happens when we start to believe that there is more outside the safety of the walls of our life?

Each piece is a portrait of contemplation, a meditation on a facet of a life that is in the process of being understood and transcended.

Each of our lives is filled with the need for change - some that come to us as strident emergencies, and others that live within us as quiet, persistent urgings. These works are a reminder that we can be the authors of our own transformation through small acts of self-compassion underneath the surface.

Recent solo exhibitions include Relational Affects, Rotunda Gallery, Kitchener, ON, Unleashed, Gallery 4, Hamilton, ON and Liminality, O Gallery, Kitchener, ON. Recent group exhibitions include Nord Art 2021, Büdelsdorf, Germany, Dying., Toronto, ON, A Book About Death: The Last Waltz, Islip, NY, Transformation, Toronto, Ontario, Manthan, Lucknow, India, and Stranger Than Fiction, Millepiani, Rome. She participated in the Biophony Residency in Chelsea, Quebec and the Awakening Residency at Artscape Gibraltar Point, Toronto, ON and the DVSA Advanced Studio Residency and is the recipient of the Canada Council for the Arts Explore and Create Grant, the Ontario Arts Council Exhibition Assistance, the Juror’s Choice Award, Fieldcote Museum, Ancaster, ON, People's Choice Award, McMaster Museum of Art, Hamilton, ON, The Lorna and David Somers Community Contribution Award for the Arts, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, a Bank of Montreal First Art! Nominee, McMaster University School of The Arts, Hamilton, ON. and an invited member of the OSA. Her work can be found in the permanent collections of ARTPOOL, Budapest, Hungary, Lucknow University, Lucknow, India, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Museum fur Kommunikation, Berlin, Germany, Museum fur Kommunikation, Bern, Switzerland, Museum Scholoss Mayland, Bedburg-Hau, Germany, The Alternative Traditions in Contemporary Arts Archive of the University of Iowa, The Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, The B. Davis Schwartz Library, Long Island University Post, New York, USA, The Book Art Museum, Lodz, Poland, The Fluxmuseum, St. Louis, MO, The Islip Art Museum, East Islip, NY, The Karuizawa New Art Museum, Japan, The Moscow Museum, Russia, The NYC MoMA, New York, USA, The Mumok, Vienna, Austria, The Musee de la Poste, Paris, France, The Waskomium, Burlington, VT, and in various private collections.