Atleigh Homma

Home: Toronto, ON
Title: I like the idea of romantic thoughts, but I’m just not that poetic of a person
Media: Acrylic on stretched canvas
Dimensions: 91 x 60 cm

As a person of mixed-race, my work is concerned with identity and how my presentation informs the behaviour of those around me. In I like the idea of romantic thoughts, but I’m just not that poetic of a person, I consider the relationship between the artist and muse. Occupying both positions, I inhabit the role of an innocent young woman disinterestedly educating herself on poetry. Parodying masculine topes from art history, the portrait mixes Renaissance aesthetic, Modern themes, and Contemporary plasticity. The painting itself, rendered in acrylic, is compositionally balanced through flat monotone planes and bright pops of highly rendered colour that give the work a strange tension, emphasized by the central figure’s confrontational gaze, leveled at the viewer in perpetuity.

Atleigh Homma is a multi-disciplinary artist working in Toronto. She completed her BFA in Drawing and Painting from OCAD University in 2016 where she was the recipient of the John Madott Fine Art Award. She has been a member of the new-media artist collective Tough Guy Mountain since 2014, performing for galleries and events such as the AGO, the Power Plant, Art Toronto, and Nuit Blanche. Independently Atleigh has been working on a performative YouTube project entitled The Joy of Atleigh, in which she juxtaposes hyper-feminine beauty-guru culture with the extremely masculine intellectualism of the art world. In November of 2018, Atleigh had her first solo show If I’ve Been Enveloped in Tenderness, which dealt with the appropriative nature of image making in the 21st century as well as her experience as a half-Japanese woman.

Solo Exhibitions
2018 – If I’ve Been Enveloped in Tenderness, The Brandscape, Toronto ON
2017 – The Joy of Atleigh, Bookcase Micromuseum and Library, Western University, London ON
2016 – Review of Gouache, Xpace External Space, Toronto ON

Group Exhibitions
2019 – I Blink My Eyes to Keep the Time, Beaver Hall Gallery, Toronto ON
2018 – Longest Night Salon X Coffin Factory, This Month Only, Toronto ON
2017 – Art Toronto, Metro Toronto Convention Centre, ON (OCAD U Booth)
2017 – Monument to the Century of the Revolutions: Post Capitalist Propaganda, Nuit Blanche, Nathan Phillips Square, Toronto ON*
2017 – After Now, Desire Lines curated by Art Spin, 291 Lake Shore Blvd, Toronto ON*
2017 – THAT WOULD BE FINE TOO, ART CAMP Residency Show, Ryerson Artspace, Toronto ON
2016 – GradEx 101, Annual Graduate Exhibition, OCAD University, Toronto ON
2016 – Festival of the Body, Annual Figure Exhibition, OCAD University, Toronto ON
2016 – Ryan Gander Nomadic Resident Student Project Exhibition, OCAD University Ada Slaight Gallery, Toronto ON
2015 – Art Toronto, Metro Toronto Convention Centre, ON (OCAD U Booth)
2015 – Tough Guy Mountain Intern Testing Facility, Art Toronto, ON (AGO Event)*
2015 – PULP FREE, The White House Studio Project, Toronto ON
2015 – Exhibit A (Life), Brinks Building Exhibition, OCAD University, Toronto ON
2015 – Tough Guy Mountain Performs for Grand Opening, Gallery TPW, Toronto ON*
2014 – E-Go, Purchasing the AGO, First Thursdays, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto ON*
2014 – Supporting the Arts: Another Project by Tough Guy Mountain, Nuit Blanche, Whippersnapper Gallery, Toronto ON*

*as Tough Guy Mountain Collective