WHITE SHADOWS is an textile installation which premiered in Saskatchewan as a 24-hour 5 day outdoor installation during the winter of 2019. It later provided the foundation for two films: Les Animatas No. 1 and Lesia Animatas No. 2 and was featured at the Turchin Visual Arts Center, 2020. The almost life size, blurry and indiscernible palimpsest like photographs of the early immigrants to Canada and those imprisoned at Canadian World War One internment camps appear like echoes or vibrations. The 26 floating silk panels immerse visitors, fraying the boundary between the audience and the work, between the self and the other, between the past and present.  White, as if white noise, easy to ignore. In constructing an immersive experience the audience is invited to explore their role as co-authors of memory. I am interested in how memories are made and the audience’s capacity to engage with art and memory making.

The film OH CANADA! OH CANADA! memorializes Canada’s 1914-1920 first national internment operations, where thousands of men, women and children were imprisoned.  The government’s operations were political and intentional; an assault on several ethnocultural communities as part of Canada’s War Measures Act that required the imprisonment of nearly 9,000 Canadian residents who were “aliens of enemy nationality” because of their country of origin.

This installation has been made possible by a grant from the Endowment Council of the Canadian First World War Internment Recognition Fund.