Despite originally being trained in painting, in the early 1980s Tenhaaf was determined to get permission from Canadian Department of Communications (DOC) to take part in the Telidon Vista field trials supported by Bell, in Toronto and Montreal.
In addition to this, Tenhaaf played with the idea of placing contradictory cliches on computer screens within the space that both engaged the viewers and left them wondering about the lack of epistemological certainty.
The artist herself explained the installation as “an interactive encounter with received ideas intended to seduce through a sense of the familiar, and yet introduce a conceptual space for resistance to acquired knowledge.” She elaborated that in this era of technological advancements that allow us to store unlimited amounts of information, the concept of knowledge become controversial.
Ironically, despite our tremendous attraction to online databases and digitally-enhanced images, we are still drawn to a familiar past, hence why she choose to include sacred cow and Egyptian-esque architecture exhibiting that beliefs are a foundation to all modern innovations.
In that database, the artist explained the importance of the Cycladic goddess, information on which was taken from the Ramses exhibition conveniently that was taking place in Montreal, Quebec at the time.
She played with the binary objections on gender by presenting digitally rectangular light boxes depicting conventions of gender roles through digitally enhanced images (T frame capture and manipulation): a man and a woman looking at a picturesque sunset with a pink and blue strings of DNA spinning around them; texts from the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche and Luce Irigaray (hand-printed yet still computer-processed) climbing up the fine threads of the double helix where Irigaray’s portion was positioned to identify female position, and consequently, accentuate the role of the mother in reproduction and modern society in general while Nietzsche’s piece took place of a male position of power.
By intermingling the traditional aspect of hetrosexual coupling with iconic texts of influential philosophers, Tenhaaf presented a conceptual way of describing the DNA double helix exploring the connection between romantic trope of mating and procreation and scientific discovery and its control over the reproduction.
By including images of Virgin Mary and Christ in Vitro (1991) and references to the myth of Oedipus in horror autotoxicus (1992) and combining the religious ideas with scientific notions, Tenhaaf urged the viewers to realize that science doesn’t banish patriarchal ways of thinking, but on the contrary can reinforces their power and authority.
Both of these works reflected Tenhaaf’s fantasy of controlling her own arbitration within the scientific and cultural discourse of reproduction, proposing a conversation about women’s choice to remove or leave the 2 cells that are believed to be unnecessary in creating a complete human being, despite no ground knowledge on the subject.