Tom Thomson Shack Artist Residency
Iris Haussler: Divided Heavens
June – September, 2025
This summer, Toronto-based conceptual artist Iris Häussler will be artist-in-residence in the historic Tom Thomson Shack at the McMichael.
Drawing inspiration from the surrounding Humber River valley and watershed, Häussler will explore the textures and rhythms of the natural world on her daily walks through the landscape around the gallery. The shack will become her working studio—a contemplative space where she will engrave organic patterns observed on her walks onto glass and mirrors, also casting foraged materials such as bark, twigs, and leaves into gilt moulds. These delicate impressions will be combined with collages and sculptural studies to create a site-specific cabinet of curiosities.
Visitors can observe the artist’s process during scheduled open studio hours in June. The completed installation will remain on view through the end of September.
About the Artist
Iris Häussler has a long history of exhibiting her installations in offsite and non-traditional museum spaces. Her first site-specific art installation was in the women’s restrooms at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich in 1984. Since then, she has exhibited in basements, trailers, garages, apartments, churches, chapels, hotel-rooms, stores, industrial buildings, monasteries, and historic houses. Häussler is well known for her immersive installations that often revolve around fictitious personae and their artistic legacies.
Born in Germany and trained as a conceptual artist and sculptor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, Häussler’s work has been exhibited internationally. She has been the recipient of the Kunstfonds, Bonn, and won the Karl Hofer Prize 1999, in Berlin. In 2010 she was invited on the Cape Farewell (UK) High Arctic Expedition. Since her immigration to Canada she has been awarded grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Chalmers Arts Foundation, the Ontario Arts Council and the Toronto Arts Council.
Her work can be found in major national and international collections including the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; the Städtische Sammlung im Lenbachhaus, Munich and the Goetz Collection, Munich, and in private collections worldwide.
