is an artist and curatorial practitioner working in Toronto. Her practice explores the cyclical nature of life and grief, family archives, relationship systems, and the interplay of absence and presence. The themes in her work emerge from discussions, play, rituals, and lived experiences.
Exhibitions
What the Creek Told Us
Ghost Body
handheld handmade handoff
In the Absence of Presence
Bodies of Work
For Your Records
Garlic Mustard, Dame’s Rocket
Hanlan’s Bones
Everything is dying slower than me
In the Absence of Presence
CV
Email
InstagramIn the Absence of Presence
Member’s Gallery at G44
Oct 31 – Dec 12, 2020
This body of work began in 2019, when I developed an old roll of film that had photographs of my sister and I on a family vacation together. Seeing these pictures for the first time felt like I was sharing a new moment with a person I had lost, and it made me consider how our relationship had continued to grow and change since her passing. In the Absence of Presence is a meditation on the archival process, and how memory shifts when confronted with loss and grief.
Using gel medium to transfer the photographs onto slabs of drywall, the process involves a rubbing away of the paper that the ink has been transferred from, exposing the positive from the negative. During this act, there are nuances in the way that the ink reacts to the water I put on the paper, the texture from turning the paper back to a pulp, and the choice of what is revealed and what remains lost. The drywall acts as both a surface and frame, while also alluding to the idea of building home and community. This performance is informed by my personal grieving process and has become a way for me to connect with these memories.
Arrangements nods to the still life genre of photography, while documenting the passage of time through the different headstone saddles my mother creates. The silk backdrop makes reference to both the inside of a casket, and how these endowments transition from organic to synthetic with the change of seasons. Each arrangement is a labor of love for my mother, when I watch her make them I feel the depths of her love and resilience.