Installation - Kelowna Art Gallery - Okanagan Print Triennial - 2024

curated by Christine May

Juror Brair Craig, Laura Widmer, Lubos Culen and Christine May

This project was inspired by The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner, the topic of a book club hosted by the
Elizabeth Fry Society of Ottawa (EFSO). In preparation for this meeting, my daughter, Jasmin, was
reading a number of reviews (a helpful suggestion for anyone wanting to sound smart at a book club).
One review, by Abigail Deutsch published in The Yale Review, was particularly striking. It highlighted
the themes of silence that pervade this novel. Building off of this observation and the meeting’s
discussion, Jasmin casually noted that “in this book, on page after page, the silencing of
women is so loud.” It was an offhand statement, and it was only with the nudge of one of her
great friends, Feliciana, that Jasmin realized the poetic power of this statement. Shortly thereafter,
my daughter gave me a call to share this remarkable comment, and
it wasn’t long before we had decided to design and silkscreen shirts with the phrase and recently
I created this piece with the phrase translated to other languages on a pretend silent film.