Balfour creates diverse “self-portraits” that humorously reflect upon the enigma of identity. Representations of the artist in different and sometimes recognizable guises suggest the impossibility of defining a fixed sense of self, that identity is in a continuous state of flux.

A member of the collectives Spontaneous Combustion (Toronto) and Venus Fly Trap (Montreal), I teach the courses Women and the Fine Arts, as well as lithography, and the graduate seminar in printmaking at Concordia University. The boundary between care of the self and self-inflicted pain (par abrasion), marking, mortality and depression (melancholia & melanomata), and the narrative of analytic sessions (Transference-Love) are at issue in my installations. Recent exhibitions include Les Occupantes, an exhibition of installations in a Montreal partment (organized by the Venus Fly Trap Collective, 1996), m melanomata & melancholia, print/installation and artist's book, galerie Optica, Montreal (1996), Drawings and maquettes by sculptors, Galerie Samuel Lallouz, Montreal (1996), and Rx: Taking Our Medicine, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, Ontario (1995).__________Barbara McGill Balfour