Between 2005 and 2013, I engendered The Scar Project, a participatory work in which people were invited to sew, with various fibers and threads on canvas, a representation of a physical, emotional or psychological scar they carry, and write the accompanying narrative. This project was a vehicle for people to anonymously share their personal victories and traumas with others, creating a space that is simultaneously contemplative and transformative.
Much of my interest with The Scar Project has been in discovering ways to activate this ‘transformative’ space through exhibitions, workshops, and other related activities. In the Spring of 2013, I worked with a group of six Concordia students to help digitally archive all 1420 stories and accompanying canvases of project. That same winter close to 50 people lent their voices to some of those 1420 stories during recording sessions at OBORO.
Orison, the exhibition I am presenting at OBORO in the Fall of 2014, is a personal response to having carried The Scar Project –and its heartrending stories– for the last nine years. Comprised of photography, sculpture, and sound elements, the exhibition considers the indelibility of memory and the way events remain alive in our physical bodies.