selected works from 1985-2009


Sometimes I like a happy ending; sometimes I like a sad ending (2009)
random objects random thoughts (2009)
Signs of Life: an intimate portrait of someone I don't know (2008)
Le stade du Miroir (2003)
you are on my mind (2003)
Family Album (2002)
between two points (2001)
Doing Time (2000)
Staging Memory (2000)
I should have, I could have, I would have... ...if only (1998)
I am ... (1998)
The Veiled Room (1998)
Projections for the Unseeing (1997)
A Portable Viewing Station for Anxious Travelers (1994)
In Memoriam Forgetting and Remembering Fragments of History (1993)
Measure of the Man (1992)
Fragments for a Story (1991)
Search for Definition (1991)
Isn't your/my mother beautiful? (1990)
Neon for j.e. atkinson (1990)
My lips are sealed (1989)
Contradictions and Possibilities (1988)
In the room (1987)
Hide and Seek (1985)
Back to Back (1985)


Signs of Life; an intimate portrait of someone I don't know, 2008

Materials: Digital prints, glass, steel, handwritten charts and graphs 
Dimensions: Variable size
Exhibition: Loop Gallery, Toronto, Canada
Photo credit: Thomas Blanchard

Signs of Life; an intimate portrait of someone I don't know is an exhibition that investigates political and personal markers of identity through language, travel documents and personal artifacts. It asks the questions, `How do we really know someone, even those who are closest to us'? 'What clues are revealed about an identity by the material evidence left behind'? It is also about the consequences of geographic, psychological and physiological dislocation and alienation. By presenting travel documents from Occupied Europe in 1945, juxtaposed with a handwritten, meticulous recording of medication, the installation posits a relationship between the intersection of personal and political history in constructing a portrait of an individual. The title, Signs of Life; an intimate portrait of someone I don't know, refers to the traces we leave behind and challenges what is revealed by these artifacts. The elements of the installation demonstrate a tension between the private and the public or intimacy and distance.