Mary Kavanagh

Mary Kavanagh is a Canadian visual artist and a Professor in the Department of Art at the University of Lethbridge. Her sustained examination of nuclear colonialism has been translated through moving image, photographic, drawing, and spatial practices. Her artwork is exhibited in Canada and internationally and responds to conceptual, political, and felt imperatives.

Artist and research residencies have taken her to remote locations across the globe, including active military bases, weapons testing and research facilities, and sites of mining extraction and remediation. Immersion in places with complex or difficult histories has resulted in multi-faceted exhibitions that explore access to publicly held lands, institutions, and data. She has recently returned from Maralinga Tjarutja in South Australia, site of the British Nuclear Testing Program (1952-1963) where she toured the lingering devastation wrought by atomic testing in the desert outback.

Kavanagh’s work has been generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, the Saskatchewan Arts Board, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. She was Principal Investigator of a SSHRC Insight Grant focused on the Trinity atomic bomb test site in New Mexico, a project that continues to unfold.

Her work has been the subject of numerous critical reviews and essays, and has been featured in publications including War Art in Canada: A Critical History, Art Canada Institute Institut De L’Art Canada, 2021; Through Post-Atomic Eyes, MQUP, 2020; and The Bomb in the Wilderness: Photography and the Nuclear Era in Canada, UBCP, 2020, and Voices: Artists on Art (Lammerich / Carr-Harris, 2017).

Mary Kavanagh holds a BA in Art Studio from the University of Guelph, an MA in Art History from the University of Western Ontario, and an MFA from the University of Saskatchewan. She was appointed Board of Governors Research Chair, Tier I in Fine Arts from 2020-2025. She is a Member of the Royal Canadian Academy of the Arts, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, Academy of Arts and Humanities.

Mary Kavanagh is an advisory board member of the Atomic Photographers Guild.

Email: marykavanagh13@gmail.com 
Web: www.marykavanagh.ca