and Counting
(2021)
Mirroring Canada’s dark history along with the lives of Indigenous children found from Indian Residential School burial sites, layers of pigment, such as charcoal, graphite and chalk, bury one another leaving traces and seeping through the surface.
This piece began as a portrait of Ryerson Egerton, the founder of Ontario’s public educational system and a contributing factor towards the implementation of Indian Residential Schools that housed thousands of Indigenous children. Although his portrait was the first mark applied on the surface, his mark still remains apparent and acts as a container for this piece. Growing from within Ryerson’s bust, the bottom half of the portrait transforms into a burial site of children’s shoes. Symbolic of the Indigenous children found at the Canadian Kamloops Indian Residential School’s site, Ryerson’s body acts as the ground that houses and buries these shoes. Similar to the act of shoveling soil over the remains, an applied layer of charcoal covers the drawn shoes, absorbing them into darkness.
What was once uncontaminated soil now sprouts the Canadian flag, born from colonization at the cost of others lives. Stenciled on top of the piece are the numbers of burial sites and Indigenous children found, and still counting. Some are scratched off of the surface to denote how this history of our’s is still dismissed. Excerpts from the nation’s national anthem are laid over this piece, writing “Glorious and Free.” Words that ignore the blood on our hands and the lives that have in exchange given us a place to call home.
The final layer of pigment is a wash of white chalk on the entirety of the piece. This acts as a representation of the cleansing of the people and the bleaching of our history that has allowed for so many of us to stand ignorant to the roots of our nation.
This is an opportunity for us to listen. When there are no words, there are feelings. And when there are feelings, there is an opportunity to create change.