You sit in a garden

September 23 - November 21, 2021

Critical Distance Centre for Curators (CDCC) – Fall 2021 Exhibition

Artists: Tanya Lukin Linklater, Laurie Kang, Lila De Magalhaes, Nona Inescu, Jenine Marsh
Curator: Chris Andrews

Dear visitor,

Welcome to our shrouded backyard, this garden filled with holes. It was aerated earlier: the earth turned inside out. Now it sits in small amulets across the lawn, left permeable.

You have to know that when this garden was conceived, I had been walking barefoot on a reflexology footpath in the early morning; a circular path with stones protruding from its concrete floor. After stripping off my shoes and socks, I carefully put one foot down after the other onto the stones. They pushed back like they were trying to tell me something – offered themselves as a gift to each bone that inhabits the foot. 

I propose this space as a sensory garden; little pieces of the footpath evaporated and distilled. Each artwork here proposes a way to live, with its own ontology, and I take notes from every one. These works present the body’s overwhelming capacity for potential, both for things that propose to harm (illness, infection, disability), and those that support (health care systems, healing touches, assistive technologies). You sit in a garden sees this all become entangled with different definitions of life itself.

You sit in a garden brings together the work of Tanya Lukin Linklater, Laurie Kang, Jenine Marsh, Lila de Magalhaes, and Nona Inescu. Each included work proposes a new bodily form, movement, or way to touch, pushing for an expanded definition of what a body should be.

For more information:

https://www.criticaldistance.ca/program/you-sit-in-a-garden/#more-15564