Fault Lines
Fault Lines was exhibited in an Open Book Art Collective (OBAC) show, Dance to the Coming End, at Vancouver Writer’s Fest. In keeping with OBAC’s mission of creating dialogue between literature and art objects, the exhibit entered into conversation with Vancouver author Leanne Dunic’s lyrical novel To Love the Coming End.
“Singapore grows, a city of glass, as if there is no threat of plates and quakes.”
- Leanne Dunic in To Love the Coming End
Tectonic plates shift and jar below the surface of the Pacific-rim landscape of Leanne Dunic’s To Love the Coming End: “Nothing is anchored. Today is unstable, easy for people and land to split.” Shopping malls sprout up overnight, amusement parks decay, whole villages are swallowed by the sea, shifts and tragedies that echo the narrator’s experience of loss.
In Fault Lines, I explore the ways in which love shapes identity, in and through the “threat of plates and quakes” inherent in loving others. My pieces reference family photographs of my grandparents at their most relaxed and informal, seated on lawn chairs at the lake or in the yard on a summer’s day long ago. In reflecting on these faded memories, I trace ways in which loss of these loved ones has shaken my connection to the past and my cultural heritage. Bringing others into the landscape of our lives means risking loss. These pieces celebrate the growth that happens when we allow others — even those we lose — to shape the geography of our hearts.
