Panya Clark Espinal explores mechanisms of representation and their influence on perception in her multidisciplinary artistic practice. Seeking to bridge the gap between the world as seen in images and that of tangible experience, her site-specific sculptural installations, exhibitions, and public commissions focus on bringing renewed intimacy to the act of looking while exploring questions of perspective, physicality, and memory.

Clark Espinal’s most recent body of print-based works, Material Redistribution – Hamilton, plays with the blurring of boundaries between sculpture and image-making while investigating the power of material engagement to build connections with physical surroundings. For this project, recent investigations employing brick dust as a pigment for printmaking were expanded upon using bricks collected in local Hamilton historic sites. Urban foraging expeditions in the [no-longer functioning] Century Brick Works brickyard and The Cotton Factory generated a varied collection of bricks subsequently broken down for material reuse. A technical shift for this project led Clark Espinal and Smokestack’s analog printmaker, Laine Groeneweg, to experiment with use of the prepared brick dust for silkscreen printing.

As Clark Espinal has proceeded through the various phases of the Material Redistribution project (this being the third phase), she has come to recognize the brick dust pigments as a broad spectrum of living entities, each with unique qualities and characteristics. Having harvested fragments in Hamilton from both long-standing structures and abandoned skids of bricks yet to be employed, these “Old Hamilton” and “New Hamilton” characters have informed and influenced the outcome of each work as the series has developed. While the story of each brick, the origins and travels of each and every element contained therein, holds many mysteries, Clark Espinal asks “How can I come to know you?”.

Panya Clark Espinal holds a diploma in Experimental Art and Sculpture Installation from the Ontario College of Art and an MFA in Criticism and Curatorial Practice from OCADU. Over her 30-year artistic practice, Clark Espinal’s works have been presented in numerous exhibitions across Canada and internationally in Europe, Asia, and South America. Her public art commissions may be found across various locations in the Toronto Transit Commission; BMO Place, Toronto; Mississauga Transitway Bus Line; Covenant House, Toronto; and The Rehabilitation Institute of Toronto to name a select few. Clark Espinal lives and works in Toronto, ON.