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Emotional impact of hurtful words explored in art exhibit

Self-worth is closely tied to physical image, says artist
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Artist Megan Stein (contributed photo by Chelsea Yang-Smith).

Megan Stein no longer recalls the exact words that were hurled at her in high school, but still remembers their sting.

“They made me feel as if my life didn’t have any value…”

In the 12 years since she was at the receiving end of a hurtful remark about her looks, Stein has often thought about why it left such a big scar on her psyche when she was 15 or 16.

At the time, she never considered why a high-school classmate would have suggested the result of a cancer operation she had at age two would leave her undesirable as a romantic partner.

“I just took it as the truth.”

The 28-year-old artist has explored the emotional impact of injurious words in her printmaking exhibit, When All is Said, at Red Deer’s Harris-Warke Gallery.

The show symbolically centres around lino prints of a black Balkan blossom — the hellebore — that flourishes in colder, hostile climates. It was used by the Greeks as a medicine on the false assumption they could somehow purge patients of melancholia.

“I use my individual experiences to reflect on how judgment and assumption about the physical body are internalized to affect self-worth,” and the impact of this on physical and psychological well-being, Stein explains in her artistic statement.

Most of us have run into a mean girl (or boy), at some point in our lives, who couldn’t resist spotlighting some of our perceived physical inadequacies — ways in which we fall short of the ideal.

Women and girls are arguably more sensitive to these remarks, since society puts more value on female looks, said Stein, who has a fine arts degree from the University of Alberta and has studied printmaking at the Banff Centre.

She hopes viewers of the exhibit, which contains laser-cut text highlighting the pain caused by harsh words, realize they aren’t alone in navigating the minefield of high school, unrealistic media imagery, or societal expectations.

For anyone who’s ever made a judgmental or thoughtless remark, Stein hopes they do some self-reflecting. Mainly, she hopes to prompt discussion about the damage that negative comments and assumptions can cause; “the underlying universal feelings of loneliness, shame and physical dissatisfaction.”

The exhibit runs upstairs at Sunworks on Ross Street until Saturday, March 24.



lmichelin@reddeeradvocate.com

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