“This fascination with collecting and sorting becomes just as much my artistic process as drawing or painting.”
Winnipeg, home to Suzie Smith’s Albert Street studio in the Exchange, is the city of palpable layers. Change is just slow enough to be able to recognize previous incarnations. A Main Street dive is turned into an organic eatery. Nighttime stencil artists blanket the city with visual exhortations. Graffiti-laden buildings speak new cultural appropriations. The art of retouching comes in many forms. As Smith explains of her project Second Hand, “I wanted to have a bit more fun like when you were a kid and drew a moustache on someone’ s portrait.”