Mina Totino

Mina Totino is a Vancouver-based painter who has been exhibiting for the past decade. Throughout this period, she has drawn upon seminal moments from the "official" history of painting such as the heroics of Abstract Expressionism, the genres of still life and the finality of the monochrome. But she has inserted elements commonly considered feminine — images of women, fashion accessories and decorative patterns. Through this strategy, she asserts a place for women within what has traditionally been a male dominated practice.

In this exhibition, Totino presents a diversity of imagery that is both representational and abstract. The paintings are sensual in their colour and surface but unsettling in their range of associations — from the rich colours of makeup to the inscription of a tattoo to renderings of body innards. Together, this construct of associations disrupts the pleasure of looking and the clarity of representation to create a sense of doubt about how we look at paintings. Each of these paintings stand as a unified structure, but in combination they function as an installation that can be rearranged according to the space of presentation. The installation tends to read like an extended phrase; the paintings are spaced to create an armature of assertions and pauses.

### Biography 
Mina Totino has exhibited widely in Vancouver. She was included in *Young Romantics* at the Vancouver Art Gallery and has shown at the Or Gallery, Artspeak Gallery and the Front Gallery. In 1991, she was part of an exhibition of four Canadian women artists, *Other Frontiers*, which was presented in Glasgow, London and Paris. Most recently she exhibited in *Corpus* which was organized by the Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon for a national tour.


Essay: “Mina Totino: Paintings,” Keith Wallace

A close view of a painting of overlapping flowers. The flowers are red, yellow, blue and pink. 

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Four vertical paintings in a gallery. One is all black, one has several large flowers layered together, one has a skull spewing blood from its mouth, and one is black with a textured beige circle. 

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Five vertical paintings in the corner of a gallery. The paintings depict various things, including a human digestive system, flowers, and a skull. One painting is all red, and one is all black.

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A photo of three vertical paintings in a gallery space. One painting is pale pink and hangs to the left. One painting is all red, and another depicts a human digestive system. 

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Three vertical paintings in a gallery. One painting has a dark background and the word "penetrate" written across in red, one painting is grey-blue and one shows various flowers, including daffodils.

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Three vertical paintings in a gallery. One has several large flowers layered together, one has a skull spewing blood from its mouth, and one is black with a beige circle that has a cracked texture.

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Paintings

Through her choice of subject matter and her use of brushstrokes and colour, Mina Totino’s paintings evoke agitation and unrest. These isolated figures on ambiguous grounds do not, however, cause panic or crisis, but rather a sense of disturbed agitation.

Her treatment of the surface, especially the frenetic, crossed brushstrokes, mirror the positions of subjects caught at some point in a newsworthy narrative. The overall feeling of decay, the graffiti of simultaneous layering and peeling away addresses the effects of mediation where conflicts become merely news — front page items one day and the next day, forgotten. Such disposable images take on a new longevity when instated in paint.

As a woman artist operating in the domain of large-scale figure painting and addressing marginalized or oppressed subjects, Totino’s choice of media and content reflect her own position and take it forward in a new direction.

Totino’s paintings describe issues and subjects which are continuously sensationalized and then dismissed in the media. Her work offers us the opportunity to reassess our attitudes towards such images and their meanings.

Essay: "Waiting for the Angelus," Miriam Nichols

A painting of a person in a pink skirt, walking with their gaze low, with a large red stripe on their right. In the background, there is a faint silhouette of an upside-down toyota truck. 

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A gestural painting showing a dark figure in a blue jacket and flared black pants running with their arms raised in front of them. The background is made of yellow and white brush strokes.

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A dark painting with expressive brushstrokes showing a person laying down on their side. Their white shirt and blue pants have large red splotches on them, and the background is mostly black.

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A gesticulative painting shows a person with pale skin in a pink dress, in a dynamic pose. The background is split into black and yellow, and large red letters in the background are partially visible.

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A square, abstract painting made with short gestural brush strokes, and scratches. The colours present in the painting are black, yellow, orange, white, and blue.

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A layered, abstract painting, showing a round orange form with a black oval at its centre. The form is asymmetrical with frayed edges and is in front of a pale blue background. 

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Mina Totino Paintings

This bulletin was published in 1987 by the Contemporary Art Gallery on the occasion of the exhibition Mina Totino: *PAINTINGS* at the Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver from November 24 – December 19, 1987.

Mina Totino

Exhibitions

Publications & Editions