The Zack Gallery show is a subset of the book, a selection of paintings and sculptures the memoir highlights. The paintings are mostly collages based on the artist\u2019s photographs. Each photo is Photoshopped into infinity, so none of the faces in the paintings have any resemblance to their origins. Campbell likes to experiment with images, looking at them from different perspectives, applying different approaches. Like her inner child who never grew up, she plays with them, making up different stories for different levels of perception.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n One of the paintings, \u201cCorridor of Memories,\u201d has a couple of faces looking at the viewer with thoughtful, slightly anxious expressions. Behind those faces, a long corridor stretches into an unknown distance. The memories that come from that distance seem diverse and unsettling, a mix of positive and negative, but different for everyone.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is bad there but there is also some good stuff there,\u201d she said. \u201cI played with the faces in that painting. I thought it would be interesting to make them three-dimensional. That\u2019s how I came up with the sculptures in the show. They are the result of the images unfolding from 2D to 3D.\u201d \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Another painting that underwent a similar metamorphosis is \u201cShall We Dance? \u2013 self meeting Self.\u201d Campbell explained: \u201cI took this image from the confines of a frame and brought it to life by making it three-dimensional. The title, \u2018self meeting Self,\u2019 refers to the small self, the individual, the ego, meeting the Universal Self, and the ensuing dance of Self-discovery, joy and wonder of life.\u201d<\/p>\n The 3D dancers \u2013 a thickened silhouette of the flat painted image beside it \u2013 rotate. They are accompanied by the song \u201cShall We Dance,\u201d played by a tiny music box, when someone winds it up.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Sometimes Campbell\u2019s reconstruction of images results not in an additional dimension but in a deepening complexity of the original idea. In \u201cThe Sky is Falling,\u201d she took a person\u2019s outline from the painting beside it and embellished it with everything that she felt was relevant to our hectic lives. Unlike most of the other paintings in the gallery, there is no face in this one. The grey danger hangs over all of us, regardless of our facial features or skin colour.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThere are lots of similarities in our world today and the one that preceded WWII,\u201d said Campbell. \u201cThat\u2019s why I put a crow in that painting. A crow is a traditional symbol of death, but also of transformation, of change and the future.\u201d<\/p>\n Like the book it is based on, the show is not linear. It reflects the artist\u2019s response to various events in her life, both happy and sad, from her coming of age, to the current war in Ukraine. Both the memoir and the show emphasize Campbell\u2019s personal journey through the beauty and the trauma of life, so inextricably entangled together.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n At the gallery on Jan. 23, 7 p.m., Campbell will discuss her book and her art in an event co-presented by the Zack Gallery and the JCC Jewish Book Festival. Campbell\u2019s exhibit will be on display until Jan. 27. To learn more, check out the artist\u2019s website, olgacampbell.com.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n![\"image](\"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/jan-17-VA.17.Olga-Campbell_2025-CorridorOfMemories.jpg\")
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