the currents that carry us
Considering place through the long-lived tradition of storytelling in Atlantic Canada allows for a rich transfer of knowledge about the known and unknown worlds. Here, place can be understood as a community percolating with stories about shared rural upbringings, endearing anecdotes from the shores, and peculiar island secrets. Meditating on place is how we hold on to the past, and storytelling is the current that carries us forward.
Channelled through the artwork of eight emerging artists with origins or long-standing relationships to the provinces of Atlantic Canada, this exhibition pursues storytelling that isn’t rooted in written or spoken word. The artists take the expectations of the medium and they twist it—building new and experimental ways of storytelling which match the variable ways we remember place: through smell, touch, sound, and sight. the currents that carry us is a contemporary and interdisciplinary take on storytelling explored through such material manipulation. Ultimately, these stories converge around what the provinces share: the water that flows around this land and what it takes away, leaves us with, and teaches us.
Curated by Roxanne Fernandes, featuring works by Alex Antle, Carley Mullally, Emily Shaw, Jordan Beaulieu, Morgan Possberg Denne, Natalie Michelle Goulet, Nicole Rampersaud, and Somnia Lucent.
An interview with Roxanne Fernandes
Photo credit: Morgan Possberg Denne, Hand Tanned Atlantic Salmon Skins. Photo by Dan Cardinal McCartney
