Unvanishing Traces is a group exhibition that grapples with the paradox of remembering the dead, particularly marginalized bodies, when existing cultural forms threaten to betray their memory. The missing and the murdered individuals who populate our headlines each day bear poignant witness to contemporary media practices of spectacularizing tragedy. In death their bodies are trivialised, sentimentalised, mystified, embellished and instrumentalized. For communities left behind, collective memory and consciousness are continually contested by socio-political narratives predicting which bodies do and do not matter. This exhibition seeks to inhabit the conflicted space between traces of the departed that refuse to vanish, and the representative regime which flattens, serializes, or otherwise erases precarious bodies.
Unvanishing Traces, 2018. Installation view, works by Ashley M. Freeby, Megan Feheley, Maanii Oakes, and Mikayla de Bruyn in view. Photo credit: Polina Teif
Left: Works by Aaron Moore. Right: Work by Ayo Tsalithaba. Photo credit: Polina Teif
Unvanishing Traces, 2018. Works by Ayo Tsalithaba. Photo credit: Polina Teif.
Unvanishing Traces, 2018. Works by Ayo Tsalithaba. Photo credit: Polina Teif.
Unvanishing Traces, 2018. Works by Ayo Tsalithaba. Photo credit: Polina Teif.
Unvanishing Traces, 2018. Works by Aaron Moore. Photo credit: Polina Teif.
Ashley M. Freeby, Remnant no. 1. Photo credit: Polina Teif
Ashley M. Freeby, Remnant no. 1. Photo credit: Polina Teif
Foreground: Works by Mikayla de Bruyn. Background: Works by Maanii Oakes. Photo credit: Polina Teif
Left: Works by Maanii Oakes. Right: Works by Mikayla de Bruyn. Photo credit: Polina Teif
Left: Works by Mikayla de Bruyn. Right: Works by Maanii Oakes. Photo credit: Polina Teif
Megan Feheley, Bundles for Hard Times. Photo credit: Polina Teif
Megan Feheley, Bundles for Hard Times. Photo credit: Polina Teif
Megan Feheley, Bundles for Hard Times. Photo credit: Polina Teif
Megan Feheley, Bundles for Hard Times. Photo credit: Polina Teif
Megan Feheley, Bundles for Hard Times. Photo credit: Polina Teif
Megan Feheley, Bundles for Hard Times. Photo credit: Polina Teif
Unvanishing Traces, 2018. Works by Ayo Tsalithaba. Photo credit: Polina Teif.