Deaths, Memorials, Births

On November 6, 2006, I began to collect ‘Obituary’ sections from the Toronto Star, as they were read. Reading over the death notices, I started to formulate memories of experiences –many of these memories are fabricated, as they became constructions of what I imagined past relationships were like, is like in the present, and would be like in the future. I kept track of words that resonated with me on each day, and wrote them noting what column and row they were located on. Once I completed this process for one day, I worked with these words to create a metaphorical narrative that was representative of the memory that transpired. I removed all of the death notices leaving the borders that framed them and the lines that separated them. Taking the words that were selected and removed, I replaced them in the original space where they were found.

The actual newspaper is essential, as the material speaks to the ephemeral nature of this work. The newspaper, especially as an ‘everyday’ object, acts as the mater-ialization of the passing of time, the negation that has occurred and will continue to occur, and as an indi-cator of the time that cannot be re-tracted and replenished. This effect is further emphasized with the date that indicates the day the newspaper was printed, as well as with those that indicate the day of one’s pas-sing. Each date holds a particular place in time and in history.

The notion of the newspaper as an ‘everyday’ object transforms the ‘Obituary’ section into a compel-ling artifact of both the past and the present. There is a compelling dicho-tomy that exists within the obituary as an object.

With each death notice, which are markers of an individual’s absence, there is an overwhelming sense of presence. I chose to cut out the death notices, because each individual became too ‘present’ and in turn, the work then reflected upon them rather than on the absence I was attempting to articulate.

In relation to Deaths, Memorials, Births, the informal ‘collaboration’ between myself and the original author conceives a third person/mind who is always unaccounted for. This third person/mind is one factor that makes this artwork accessible to others. This displacement of authorship exposes a space where anyone reading these words can appropriate the narrative to conform to their personal experience, memory, or thought.

Deaths, Memorials, Births is an ongoing, ever-growing work. It will continue for as long as I have the ability to remember the past and imagine the future. When installed, the individual pieces that comprise this work take the form of a memorializing structure, both through the actual objects created and the shadows projected on the wall by the sheets themselves. The shadows create a three-dimensional component to the work, but also re-enunciate the pace at which the absence grows and spreads from day to day, and month to month. In a sense, the shadows compensate for loss by giving a presence to empty, negative spaces. In a temporary way, they concretize and cast a body that is lost, missing, but never forgotten and never quite remembered. As a body of work displayed on a wall, they create a monumental gesture of grief and of loss. At this point in its creation, this monument functions as a form of remembrance, grief, preservation, tension, and trauma.

Title: Deaths, Memorials, Births

Media: Newspaper and Digital Photography

Size: Actual objects 11’’x22’’each.

Digital photographs of the set 24’’x 24’’

Year: 2007