Exhibitions:
Sept 2024-April 2025 : “Atmospheres of Sound: Sonic Art in Times of Climate Disruption”, PST exhibition, Getty. Curated by Victoria Vesna and Anuradha Vikram, UCLA Art|Science Centre, California.
Sept 2023: Nuit Blanche Toronto 2023: Etobicoke Hub, Humber Lakeshore, Canada
July 2023: “Arborescent || Resistance”, University of Coimbra, Portugal.
Nov 2022: “Contact” the Ammerman Centre for Arts and Technology 17th Biennial Symposium. Connecticut College Commissioned Artist.
In Silence
In Silence . . . reflects on the ongoing work of the artist with community partners in Jane-Finch, one of the most economically challenged and racialized areas of Toronto and the stories embodied in them and their children. In its aesthetic form, it references the artist’s previous installation “Between us a Breeze” (2016) that explored the impoverished nature of communication across a visitation booth by visualizing speech as gusts of wind across a reflecting pool. In our social-distancing epoch, this interpersonal distance is especially felt through virtual conversations that deny us multisensory connection, and introduce artefacts of digital and network failure. The work takes a selection of these anecdotal stories and abstracts them through actors on a screen limited to non-vocal expressions, and a reflecting pool that is activated by cymatic visualizations of their speech, scored loosely against the text’s emotional intensity. The entirety of these stories is accessible through a bone-conductance railing (that forces the visitor into a position reminiscent of pain or anguish), and a phone hotline. Inspired by Salome Vogelin’s quote: In Silence, time does not move but vibrates gently on the spot. It is slowed down on my body whose time it has become, In Silence . . .pays tribute to the resilience of the community through the emotional turmoil of the pandemic that has made them feel they were in a perpetual suspension and immobility, and the stories of survival that have emerged.
For Atmospheres of Sound, UCLA, April 2025, the work takes a selection of anecdotal stories abstracted from interviews with individuals at medical, ecological and socio-cultural frontlines. The stories featured in this installation come from community partners in the Jane-Finch neighbourhood of Toronto, Canada, as well as from first-person narratives from The Climate Disaster Project at the University of Victoria. In particular, stories #4 and #5 were adapted from testimonies by Genevieve Clarke and Michele Fiest and can be found in their entirety here:
Story #4 : Genevieve was adapted from a testimony by artist Genevieve Clarke, Enterprise, Northwest Territories, Canada (pop. 75, 2021). 2023 Hay River/ K’átł’odeeche/Kakisa fire as told to the University of Victoria’s Jon Miller and Sean Holman for the Climate Disaster Project. To read her story please visit the website: https://climatedisasterproject.com/testimony/i-heard-a-voice-saying-remember-job/
Story #5 : Michelle was adapted from a testimony by retired mental health nurse Michele Feist from Lytton, British Columbia, Canada (pop. 210, 2021) about the 2021 Lytton Creek fire as told to the University of Victoria’s Aldyn Chwelos and First Nations University of Canada’s Christina Gervais for the Climate Disaster Project. To read her story please visit the website: https://climatedisasterproject.com/testimony/i-knew-in-the-back-of-my-head-somewhere-that-lytton-was-gone/
The Climate Disaster Project is an award-winning international teaching newsroom coordinated at the University of Victoria that works with climate-impacted communities to document and investigate their stories using trauma-informed techniques. https://climatedisasterproject.com/
Actors: Ayesha Khan, Joella Crichton, Jamie Robinson, Soo Garay and Daniella Mooney
Videographer: Michael Miroshnik
Fabrication support: Liz Tsui and Jacob Turola, Jo Yetter, Jeremy Katz, Mae Chen
Exhibition at Ammerman Centre for Art and Tech (2022)
