She Also Served

Frieda Bindman left her position as a school principal to enlist in the Royal Canadian Navy. Serving for over three years, one of her duties was decoding top-secret signals. Turner understands Bindman's work as a metaphor for an outlook on the world in which she was in the background, perhaps as a woman, perhaps as a Jew. Her work, however, constructed critical processes that led to action. In much the same way as her work was significant but somewhat invisible, Bindman, herself, like so many of her fellow servicewomen, seems to have disappeared into the background after the War, although Bindman’s contribution was later publicly recognized in a 1995 National Film Board of Canada documentary and a 2002 Maclean's article.  Turner’s image, comprised of an abstract field, referring to a sense of the spiritual and intellectual, combines with a geometry of squares of colour/texture/image, that acknowledges Bindman’s work in structure and precision.

A visual artist primarily working in digital printmaking, Winnipeg artist Susan Turner graduated from the University of Manitoba with a Bachelor of Fine Arts. She has exhibited her works in Canada, the United States and Europe.

For more information on the featured servicewoman see

Frieda Bindman (Dougherty), She Also Serves Website