Conceptual Portrait: Mental Deterioration
For nearly six years, I’ve worked as a personal assistant to a woman in her 90s who is living with dementia in her home. Over time, she has referred to me as a young boy, her grandchild, a nice girl, and a sweetheart—never by my name, as she can not remember it. To her, I’m simply someone familiar and connected to her in some way.
I’ve noticed that spending years with someone experiencing memory loss blurs the gradual progression, so this piece is an experimental way to reflect on this deterioration.
During a late-night episode when she was restless and unable to sleep, I documented her ramblings until she eventually drifted back to sleep. To preserve her privacy, I wrote her words into one of the notebooks in her home rather than recording her voice. Some aspects were lost by choosing this method, such as her emotion, the pauses in her speech, and the tone of her voice. This resulted in a more abstract piece that focused more on the content of her speech. The result is not a portrait of her personal life or of her true self but of her present condition. This compilation of fragmented and disorganized thoughts is a portrait of a mind navigating through dementia, unaware of its own decline.
Audio Art: The So-Called Negro
This audio work is an exploration of the racialized language used to describe people of African descent within the Western Hemisphere. Voices recite and often repeat terms that have been both historically and presently used to label Black people. This focus on a particular subsection of the African diaspora reflects how language has been used to divide and control, sorting people by physical appearance and ancestry. During segregation, terms became markers that physically separated individuals and later evolved into labels, stereotypes and assumptions about character, worth, and belonging.
This collection of words highlights how Black individuals have been homogenized and reduced to a single racial identity saturated with prejudice. Within these terms, however, there are moments of reclamation and resilience. There are words that, while often negative, take on different meanings within the Black community. Familial terms like “brother” and “sister” denote kinship and unity within a forced separation. Ultimately, this audio piece invites listeners to sit with both the alienation and solidarity of this racialized language and to reflect on how these labels carry legacies of both suffering and strength.
Audio Art (previous version/work in progress)
Video Art: One Feat, Three Ways
Hair Mask (Single Shot)
Braiding Hair (Loop)
The loop variation, Braiding Hair, involves braiding or fidgeting with each other’s hair. This gesture is absurdly represented in an awkward line formation where we stand arm-width apart and simultaneously begin and stop the movements. This gesture is meant to be played continuously as we perform this repeated gesture.
Playing With Hair (Edited)
The final edited variation, Playing With Hair, combines all the individual and unique gestures associated with our hair. The gestures are isolated in the shots and then compiled to showcase the differences in hair types and textures and how this affects their movement. Amalgamating the videos in this way reveals the subtle similarities of our gestures.
Toronto Biennial of Art – One Hundred More
A piece that stuck out to me was One Hundred More by Justine A. Chambers (co-authored and performed by Laurie Young). I was first drawn to this piece after hearing the rhythmic percussion through the hallway space of the gallery. When I entered the installation space, I was taken aback by the life-sized projections of two figures engaging in what appeared to be sharp, choreographed movements. Both figures moved with such conviction and, at times, broke out of their synchronized performance, moving out of alignment with one another.
Before hearing the artist speak about her and Young’s performance, I was unsure of the intent or meaning of their movements. I was intrigued to learn that they were inspired by themes of resistance.
In her audio, Chambers describes how her piece, initially created as a live performance in 2019, was reimagined as an installation piece, as seen at the 2024 Toronto Biennial of Art this year. She describes the relationship between their gestures and the images prevalent throughout recent years, reflecting the present socio-political climate of protest and resistance. Their movements are ultimately centred on the gesture “hands up, don’t shoot.”
This additional context, along with their similar background as mothers and people of colour engaged in their own form of protest or counter-resistance, adds so much weight and significance. I receive their work in a similar way to how they express themselves: with joy, grief, and solidarity.
Reflecting on the work of Pipilotti Rist
I chose the piece “Worry Will Vanish” to reflect on as I noticed that Rist often speaks about how she sees the human body reflected in nature and the environment. Rist also talks about how the human body is a camera. She feels there’s no separation between our bodies and nature, and this particular piece, I think, echoes that message.
It is a compilation of different body parts being examined alongside nature imagery. She has two projectors operating simultaneously against two meeting walls. Her choice of framing her work this way allows for varied viewing experiences. Her camera is almost examining the minute details of the human body. The camera’s position, following the bodily forms, allows for the smallest of details, such as the creases in the palm of one’s hand, to become fascinating as they become the focus.
The camera almost flows along the forms, and her editing style overlaps and intertwines with the highly saturated nature imagery.
In her interview, she mentions that when deciding which vantage point to shoot from, she considers a range of angles, including the perspective of an insect, a child, or even a stone. I think this particular piece is evidence of this type of thinking. It is effective because it allows for interaction in a way that is outside of the normal of how we interact nature and each other.
Her works strike me as uniquely intimate. She allows us to explore the human body in a way that is not often examined. Her use of sounds and instrumentals sets the tone and induces what I can describe as a trance-like feeling triggered by the images and colours.
The main difference, I feel, between Rist’s videos and mainstream videos on TikTok and YouTube is that her works are generally created to be displayed within a gallery space. When videos exist outside of our own devices and into a public space, it encourages a collaborative experience.
We spend a relatively short period of time engaging with videos and social media, whereas Rist’s videos loop and continue for extended periods. This encourages a more prolonged engagement to stop and truly contemplate the imagery.
Experiment:
Wearing my shirt inside out changes how I feel. Even if wearing my shirt with the tags and sizing information on display wasn’t blatantly evident to others, my knowledge of it allowed anxiety to creep in. I think this is because I was opening myself up to the critique of others in a way that I was acutely aware of, so this altered my confidence and changed my demeanour as I moved through public spaces.
Because wearing my shirt inside out wasn’t something I would generally do on purpose, I would consider it performance. Intentionally wearing my shirt inside out is an exercise that explores both the possible reaction of others and my internal response as the performer.
Kilometre of Kayla’s
My initial idea for this project was to collect enough measuring tapes, rulers, and other various measuring devices to make up the sum of 1 km. I planned on wrapping these measuring tools around me, putting them in my pockets, hiding them in my hair, and attaching them to parts of myself in different ways.
I collected as many measuring devices as I could, but I was only able to accumulate enough to make about 72 feet. When I realized that it would be challenging to collect enough rulers, measuring tapes, etc., to equal 1km, I decided to consider other ways to incorporate measurement tools.
I considered measuring things in my space or things I used in my everyday life, but ultimately, I decided to use an old scale that I took home from work last year after learning it was headed for the dumpster. I set this scale up outside (because that is where I had the best lighting) and asked my 6-year-old to record me getting onto it, measuring my height and then stepping off.
I am 5ft 4.5in tall. After calculating how many Kaylas would make up a kilometre, I froze the frame in the video of me standing on the scale. I decided to duplicate the still image of me on the scale 610 times to create a Kilometre of Kaylas. The actual number was 610.5, so in the frame with the most Kaylas, I included 1/2 of a Kayla.
Vertically measuring my length allowed me to explore an alternative to the lateral distance I often equate a kilometre to. Collaging myself into several frames side-by-side on top of and underneath myself also distorts this conventional way of thinking about a kilometre as a continuous distance. Instead, it becomes a fragmented kilometre unique to me, existing in one frame 610.5 times.