Installation (2021)
basswood, high-quality pigment inkjet printed photographs and text on 18 sheets of BFK Rives paper, sea salt, glass, linen thread, 60 cm wide by 74 cm height and 2.4 m long.
The viewer is encouraged to turn the pages of the never-ending story, a reinterpretation of the one found in the pages of the small book de mère / de mer. In the folds of the eighteen sheets of paper are either texts or images of the St. Lawrence Seaway and lakes in Northeastern Ontario. A short personal story about journeys, impressions, recollections, the loss of a mother and those before her is told in French in the first-person singular and is juxtaposed with its interpretation told in English in the third-person singular. The sentences read from one side of the table are rearranged in reverse order to read the story from the opposite side, creating a cycle and evoking a sense of déjà vu. The sheets are sewn into a custom-built early Canadiana inspired table. At one end of the table is a drawer, traditionally used for cutlery, filled with sea salt. Upon turning the last page, a hole in the table, the size of a plate, is revealed with under-mounted rippled glass that casts a reflection, an impression of water.
Installed next to the drawings, De mère en mer I, III, VI, in the duo exhibition Behind Between Beyond, Gallery 101, Ottawa, July 31 to August 28, 2021, with the masks and other self-portrait works of artist Miya Turnbull.
I would like to acknowledge funding support from the Ontario Arts Council and the Government of Ontario.
