OBORO invited artist Sophie Jodoin to present her recent work on war and childhood trauma to highlight a theme dear to us: peace. Excerpts from her latest series show the moral and physical suffering of war survivors, but also the trials of childhood and daily life.
Informed by visual references from magazines, the Internet and personal photos, these images go back and forth between fact and fiction. They reach beyond drawing and photography into the realm of video, fashioning a compelling whole, at once sensitive and harrowing.
Primarily using black and white drawing and working in series, Sophie Jodoin pursues her exploration of themes on the figure. Mortality, aging, rape, injury, loneliness, cruelty, spoiled innocence and emptiness are central points of interest. These subjects are expressed in gaps, in absences, and in the blank spaces of her loaded images.
In Jodoin's work, it is the unsaid that counts most and the implicit stories that permeate the expanse around each figure, stories that emanate from shrouded muteness. A paradoxical equation – less is more, absence is presence – is the connective tissue that joins all of Jodoin's work to this day.
As viewers, we find ourselves faced with a choice: we either see the pain in Jodoin's work or, conversely, feel hopeful that we can outlive the sufferings of the everyday.
[Adapted in part from a text by Isa Tousignant]