Several of the works in this issue consider how the domestic is shaped not only by private life but also by global currents, family histories, and consumer goods, nudging at the conditions that shape how we live, where we live, and with whom we choose to share our lives.
Articles
In Emma Beyond Myth, a lively exchange between Laura St. Pierre and painter Nancy Lowry, the two artists revisit their time at the storied Emma Lake workshops. Trading hot takes with vibrant chemistry, they reflect on how those experiences have resurfaced as of late in Nancy’s recent exhibition Colour In Place at Remai Modern.
A feature titled Embodying Our Ancestors by Jennifer Smith looks to the work of three contemporary Métis artists: Robyn Adams, Maria-Margaretta Cabana Boucher, and Rhayne Vermette. What binds these practices together in Smith’s essay is not any obvious aesthetic likeness but rather an expansion of what Métis art can be, as Smith writes: “None of them are looking to create a clean-cut narrative of Métis culture, and–even better perhaps—they question if there really is one. But they are looking to our future while honouring those who came before us.”
Rose Bouthillier’s profile of Hazel Eckert, Never destroyed, or created, is punctuated with quotes from readings selected by the artist. This citational structure places Eckert’s enigmatic work in conversation with poets and theorists who, like her, explore how the circulation of images inscribes itself onto their very surface, and how the proliferation of digital imagery has reshaped our interior landscape.
A pensive undercurrent runs through Clare Samuel’s work, and it carries into her interview To Behold and To Appear, with writer Lodoe Laura. Their conversation moves through Samuel’s portraiture practice across film and photography, delving into the ethics of the gaze and the quiet attunement that gives her work its distinctive, contemplative power.
“PPE (rituals) is a browser-based iteration of the speculative virtual world Plants Properties Equipment.”
In her practice, Jaime Black-Morsette often turns to the trace as a central motif, drawing out intertwined histories of oppression and resilience. The themes explored in this artist project, “presence,” emerged from her impactful REDdress project, now a potent symbol for MMIWG2S+, and have since evolved into a broader meditation on the body’s index as a persistent marker of resistance against erasure.
Following a thread from colonial hauntings to Freudian repression, Jacob reflects on the aftermath of the recent ousting of Wanda Nanibush from her position at the Art Gallery of Ontario over her pro-Palestinian stance, examining what fault lines are revealed by the residual traces left in this wake.
“Elaine Cameron-Weir’s material transformations reference, eschew, and play with these sticky meanings to reveal the invisible traces of power that dance around every aspect of our lives.”
As the conversation unfolds, the two discuss alchemy, medicine, sickness, symbolism, and artmaking in a tender exchange which is both enchanting and artful.
Traces act as evidence of repression, dispersion, unlikely affinities, secret histories, kinship, and artistic lineages.