To look at the surface of things is not enough: engaging with the objects meticulously crafted by Jennifer Laflamme, the Toronto-based artist otherwise known as Mifi Mifi, is a necessarily sensuous, embodied act, an invitation to touch the surface of an object in order to be pulled directly into its intricate world. Laflamme’s creations also implore us to rub up against the apparitions that accumulate in the folds: by implicating viewers in the surface of things, her works are saturated with bodily memory.
Speaking to Laflamme earlier this year, on a surprisingly sunny January afternoon in her airy west end studio, our conversation touched upon how—whether in the form of delicate silk paintings, or the ethereal clothing she dubs “sculptural wearables”— her fabrics index a collision between bodily and cultural memory, how her colours become sites for psychic transmissions, and how the surfaces of her works in any medium enact portals to otherworldly places.
Dhvani Ramanujam (DR): Though artistic journeys are never as linear as we’d like to think, I think it’s fruitful to begin with a question about your upbringing. What experiences have shaped you as an artist?
Jennifer Laflamme (JL): I was born in Japan and lived there with my family until I was 5. My dad, originally from Canada, had been living in Japan for over 20 years working as a temple builder, which is how my parents originally met. My mom is Korean, so my family’s experiences in Japan are complicated by the history of Japanese colonization. Many Korean families came to work in Japan during the war. When we moved to Canada, I learned French and moved to Paris for art school after high school for two years. I feel like my upbringing plays a lot into my practice. My paintings especially become imagined worlds to fill in cultural gaps. I feel they’re very childlike, because I’m trying maybe to build this world that I didn’t get enough time to spend in.
DR: I see this quality of being childlike in terms of the playfulness and imagination that’s woven into your work. Could you elaborate more on this imagined world you’re trying to build and how it ties into this larger existential search for an idea of a place connected to your sense of self?
JL: I say childlike to mean when things feel new to me, or I don’t quite understand them fully. As an adult working in a specific culture, you get the subtleties of different experiences through familiarity, but when I revisit certain places, there’s a lot of unknown stuff for me, especially in language. I try to put meanings to things, even if they aren’t always the correct meaning. I might interpret things in certain ways that are not exactly correct or culturally pure. But my work is a journey to figure out these complex cultural dynamics.
Above: Jennifer Laflamme, Kira Kira in Choco Mauve, 2022. Naturally dyed walnut fabric with silk trimming, 91 × 47 cm. Photographer: Kristina Dittmar. Image courtesy of Kristina Dittmar.
DR: Could you speak more to the technical aspects of your work and how they’re connected to your materials?
JL: After I completed school in Toronto, I started experimenting with and implementing natural dyes. I went back to Japan and took courses to properly learn natural dyeing techniques from people who’ve been working in this field for a long time. One of the things they spoke about was a plant’s health benefits as a whole. Your skin is an organ that’s actually going to interact with dyes. Learning about this opened another gate to think about process, because it wasn’t just about how to make colour but about different ways to interact with certain plants. That was such a different, respectful way to interact with materials.
I spent a few months in the countryside, in the mountains, just learning about these plants, but before that I was in the city, and I ended up working for an antiques dealer who would collect many different objects, including these old kimonos. So, I entered into this world of folk textiles and kimonos—some of which were probably over 300 years old, all dyed with natural dyes—and was shocked by how vibrant the colours were. The colours were so beautiful and layered in a way that you don’t get with chemicals. I became interested in silk because of the way silk takes colour. Cotton, for instance, has a harder time accepting colour, but silk is able to cast a gradient, and it almost shimmers within.
I began to collect these silks that were used inside these antique kimonos, to experiment and work with. I also began to think about these fabrics, how they’ve already lived—they’re stained and marked already—and I was fascinated thinking about all the different people who’ve worn these fabrics. To touch these deadstock fabrics was to be in contact with so many people who’ve essentially left their imprints. My thinking about fabric as having memory began there.
When I dye, stitch and manipulate fabric, I’m leaving an imprint. And even after you dye it, the fabric keeps living and changing and evolving in colours—it is a living thing. I always add texture too, because it transforms colour. I love thinking about how maybe this is how I leave a trace. When I came across those kimonos, I would take apart the stitches. Realizing they were done hundreds of years ago by someone, it felt like a form of time travel. To witness the traces and movements of their labour, to consider how long it took them to make this, felt special.
I also like to leave something raw, unfinished. I’m afraid of things looking too clean, because it feels unbalanced. A raw edge adds a balance, because it frays, and that’s true-to-life also. I hadn’t thought about my materials as living things before this experience.
DR: By drawing out these relationships between plants and fabrics and making, you’re also pointing to a collaborative dimension in your work that is capacious. You’re reconfiguring these plants from purely raw material into actors, co-creators, even spectral presences in your work. There seems to be a principle of reciprocity that’s guiding your relationships.
JL: Yes, I’m definitely working alongside these materials. When I’m interacting with the land and nature more generally, I try to be careful to avoid a colonizing mentality, to avoid being extractive. I’m aware when I go to collect materials in Japan that I’m a visitor and am careful of what I take and what I can give back and implement in my work. I want people to be mindful, to even take a second to consider the space and context in which my wearable pieces were made, especially in connection to the land we’re on. Many histories are already entangled within this object before you even wear it. I also want people to be aware of the fragility of materials like silk. There are ways you need to care for these materials: they have to be dry-cleaned and aired out properly because they’re made from silkworms… I guess I’m just pushing this idea of materials being precious and needing care, because in the world of fast-fashion now, people are very disconnected from that ethos.
DR: Speaking of fashion, how do you conceive your relationship to that side of your practice?
JL: My relationship to fashion has taken different stops. Even though I admire many designers, the work it takes to make clothing, and its value in making people feel beautiful, I’m pushing away from that world or don’t necessarily want to partake in it. I want my work to be seen as objects rather than just an item of fashion. I’m also interested in showing my paintings alongside these objects, to put them into different contexts.
DR: You recently had a solo exhibition, “A Pond’s Chorus,” at 100% Silk Shop + Gallery in Toronto last fall, and presented in the exhibition “Ikimono” at Junbicyu in Tokyo earlier last year. Could you speak to both those experiences, from the conceptual genesis of those particular exhibitions to the physical installation of the pieces, as well as some encounters these experiences produced?
JL: Showing work in those two locations was very different. In 100% Silk, there was already a built environment I had to work around, and that excited me. When I was originally making a big silk piece that was in that show, I thought about placing it on the storefront window but realized that would block out all the sun, so I moved it further away. I had to work with the existing environment and the objects already in the store. I loved the way the sun streamed in and hit the silk, and with the little pond in the centre, there was a piece of silk inside the water that would react and change colour throughout the exhibition.
DR: How colour becomes animated in your work is very special. It’s not stable; it’s not permanent. I had the chance to visit “A Pond’s Chorus,” and I was taken with the way all the colours in your paintings seemed to bloom from the walls. Even on something that is ostensibly a contained 2D canvas, your colours seem to resist the edges of your canvas and instead leak and bleed into the larger environment. That makes me more curious about placing the exhibition in a shop, where your works are then communing with the other objects and colours in the store.
JL: Well, my pieces were in the shop alongside many one-of-a-kind pieces, so it felt like they were in a world together, not just in my world. It felt like a collaboration to some extent, as if they were speaking to one another. There’s also the component of colours flowing from other objects that aren’t present in my work, which creates these really beautiful, unexpected transformations in colour. I could imagine my pieces, if they were in the shop longer, seeping into the surface of the walls, taking over the space, just like a plant system. They’d keep growing and transforming. If I had more time in another show, I’d also like the opportunity to move around pieces, rearrange them.
DR: Rearranging pieces to show that the world you’ve created isn’t static, but rather fluid or liminal, in a sense?
JL: Yeah, “A Pond’s Chorus” specifically is about in-between spaces. I created a pond installation for the show and thought about how wetlands are neither dry nor wet spaces; they’re always in a state of constant shift. That notion of shapeshifting is embedded in how I work and how my pieces themselves shapeshift when they need to, especially when placed against other objects and in different spaces.
DR: What was the exhibition in Tokyo like?
JL: It was called “Ikimono” (roughly translated to “living beings”), and it was with my friend Eunice Luk (Slow Editions), an artist who works with ceramics. I really enjoy collaborating with Eunice, because the ways we approach our materials are very similar. It was also my first time there showing more of my artwork than clothing. My paintings were hung on all the walls, while her ceramic work contained plant material. I felt like the pigments I used were sprawling out of the space in this tiny gallery. Because Eunice’s pieces were on the ground as well, you had to walk around slowly, like you were crawling through this little built environment. In the future, I would love to make even bigger paintings. When I dream about my clothing, right now, I picture making a tall sculpture from my textiles that is placed in the middle of the space, hardened like wax, stiffened and standing on their own from floor to ceiling. The show in Tokyo made me realize I want to make my world bigger, to create an immersive environment that people can literally walk through. The encounters we had with people also felt very intentional, and a lot of people who came by already had a culturally based knowledge of working with silks, natural dyes, and pigment painting, which was special.
DR: Returning to the technical then, when it comes to natural dyeing, I’m wondering what the day-to-day work process looks like for developing a particular piece or series of works.
JL: These days, when I’m working, I’m intrigued by colour. It begins with a specific colour and then a need to learn how to make that. There are all these techniques in that process that I haven’t yet explored, so they begin as experiments, seeing how different materials react with pigments. Right now, I’m working on a new piece on cotton. I’m just starting to explore painting with this particular fabric. I have to go over it many times, because it absorbs differently than silk. It has this watercolour wash to it that I like; the fabric breathes. It’s a matter of trial and error over a few weeks or even months at a time. The way I work, I have probably five projects going at the same time, because I believe each project has its own timing that I have to respect the rhythms of.
DR: It seems that right now you’re a bit more focused on painting than clothing.
JL: Well, my materials are all connected. I have these beautiful silk scraps leftover from my clothing that are dyed already, and I used those to start painting with, because they already have a particular colour wash. Colour is also tied so closely to emotion. In my paintings, I feel as though I can explore my landscapes more openly and as a way to capture my memories, dreams, and different visions. I’m inspired by painters who don’t necessarily work with references at first but who first begin with themselves, their own emotions. Painting is a way for me to practice listening within myself and being still. I work through these processes of experimentation, but I also work intuitively. Again, I trust the idea of following a piece’s rhythms. If I don’t have the right colours or elements, I set it aside and wait to return to it when it’s right. When things aren’t finished, they feel like they are still moving and vibrating; I know things are complete when I get a sense of stillness. I’m gravitating towards painting, because it perhaps allows me to explore my worlds more openly than clothing, which has a limit: it has to fit a body in a specific way.
DR: I’m curious about the role bodies play in your practice. If clothing is a form of sculpture, in wearing your pieces does the audience become a kind of sculpture also, a malleable surface? How does a piece become altered with the presence or absence of a body?
JL: The interactions between clothing and bodies are interesting, because, again, I think of clothing as having their own spirits and lives. We are just one addition to that life that’s already present, and wearing clothes becomes a form of collaboration between the wearer and the fabric. Clothing changes with the shape of bodies, with people’s natural oils and scents. The curves of a body will stretch and make a fabric evolve, and it will carry the marks and imprints of each of these bodies that inherit the work. I like to understand why people choose my pieces—did they connect to a certain colour? What draws them to that piece? But these pieces have a life even when they’re not worn by anybody. Clothing always leaves an imprint.
The fabrics I use are very porous, so colours are very translucent in my work. I think the way I have to layer my painting in order for colour to be absorbed is similar to memories having multiple layers too. Everything is porous, open to change. I don’t think I work with any closed surfaces. But we also interact with these objects through touch, and that’s very important to me. I want people to touch my paintings, not just to look at them, because touch sparks something different.
DR: Your pieces intrigue me because of how they not only index different forms of memory (memory that is personal, intimate, but also perhaps collective and cultural), but different experiences of memory. The porosity of the surfaces of your paintings, your sculptures, and the translucence of your fabrics allow memories to seep to the surface. I remember touching the sheer veil centrepiece in “A Pond’s Chorus,” for instance, and it felt as if I were falling into a memory, even a spell, that was outside of linear time. The textures, colours, tones, and even the folds within your fabrics capture the haziness of memories. But your work still retains a quality of opacity that simultaneously grasps how memory often operates as a trace, a vanishing of something we’re always trying to chase but can’t wholly capture. There’s an interplay between the legible and the unknowable in your cosmology. At the same time, I remember visiting your exhibition and distinctly wanting to touch one of your paintings but being unsure if I was allowed to. That was a missed opportunity.
JL: It’s so important for people to touch, to interact with these objects, rather than keeping them forever on a wall and at a distance. This interaction reminds people these objects are alive; you’re having a relationship with a living thing. In fact all of the objects in our homes are materially connected to how we live. And I want people to live with my pieces.
Jennifer Laflamme (Mifi Mifi) is an artist based in Toronto, Canada, who works with textiles and paintings. Her work is imbued with the memory and spirit of her interactions with the natural world. She draws from her background in textiles, using traditional dyeing and pigment painting techniques that are rooted in her Japanese-Korean ancestry.
Dhvani Ramanujam is a Toronto-based emerging curator and writer currently pursuing a PhD in Cinema and Media Studies at York University. Her research looks at the phenomenological experience and installation of contemporary art and moving image at the intersection of theories of aesthetics, materiality, and the body/subject.
This article is published in issue 41.1 of BlackFlash magazine. Get this issue
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