The Story

It begins with a cardboard box abandoned close to a dumpster - a recycling dumpster - at a Toronto apartment complex. A Columbian immigrant woman finds the box, labelled on four sides 'Edna Bear' in bold, black lettering. Inside, jam-packed and arranged meticulously, are more than 1700 artefacts from a life lived in Kitchener, Ontario.

People introduced to the archive where fascinated but afraid to touch it. Either they were troubled by the ethics of the invitation or considered it a complete waste of time...

This work invites a consideration of how life is given value, how it is marked and unmarked through rituals of archiving, where the traces of what remains offer sublime contemplation of what was and what might still be.

Proceed to the Archive Gallery