Ottawa art gallery explores feelings of loss

By Kristian Kelly

A new Ottawa art exhibit could be a bit unsettling for viewers. Whether it’s the array of pictures featuring ex-lovers holding hands or any of the other works on display, all of the artwork has some recurring presence of death, absence or grief.

The subject of loss, afterall, is not easy to tackle, but it’s the theme of an art exhibit that opened this week at Gallery 101 in Little Italy.

SoJin Chun, one of the curators, notes the exhibit on loss was originally entitled Being Swayze after American actor Patrick Swayze, who plays a ghost in the 1990 movie Ghost — and whose character is both dead and still present.

Eventually, the name of the exhibit changed to Universal Loss, to show how loss impacts everyone in different ways.

Chun noted the theme is something everyone can relate to, regardless of culture, background or lifestyle.

“These experiences are very human,” she said. “It’s something that we all experience and there’s no way to avoid that.”

Chun said she has been impacted by loss herself, in a very specific form: the loss of physical places. Though she was born in Korea, Chun has moved around a lot, and has also lived in Bolivia, Canada and now Brazil.

“Every time I moved, I would lose my friends, I would lose all the contacts, I would lose the language that I spoke to have to learn a new language.”

She noted loss is not necessarily all bad. It can function as a sort of rebirth, the end of one thing but also the beginning of something else: “Loss is a process of transformation and starting something new.”

The exhibit is also curated by Ulysses Castellanos, and includes the artwork of Jinyoung Kim, Alvaro and Boris Castellanos, Agustina Comedi, Michѐle Pearson Clarke and Gretchen Sankey — all with different takes on loss.

Kim’s project, entitled Genealogy of Stationary Objects, uses photography and video to look at items in a house that belongs to her family in South Korea.

The house itself, which she called a “significant part” of her identity, shows signs of aging and neglect.

“As nothing lasts forever, this house will disappear at some point, perhaps sooner than I’d like it,” Kim said in an email. “Just imagining that was difficult to handle. That’s why I wanted to make a project about it.”

Brothers Alvaro and Boris Castellanos show loss through a photo series on aging transgender women, or self-identified “ladyboys,” in Thailand.

Alvaro Castellanos said the loss of youth is particularly poignant for these ladyboys, because there’s a misconception the term can only apply to young people.

“It’s so scary for them to think of themselves as old,” he said. “It’s almost like saying you’re truly a ladyboy when you’re young, and after that, we don’t know what you are.”

Castellanos stressed the piece, which has the working title The Aging Ladyboys of Siam, can be relatable for everyone since the loss of youth is universal. “The fear of aging is so paralyzing,” he said. “We all worry about what happens when we get old.”

Universal Loss runs until Feb. 18 at Gallery 101, 51 Young St, Suite B, just west of Preston Street.

, and Clarke’s piece, which shows photos of lesbian couples who have broken up but are reunited to hold hands.

And while confronting the theme of loss might make viewers feel uncomfortable, Chun said this exhibit should force us to ask ourselves a few questions.

“How can we collectively deal with this loss and how can we take advantage of those feelings in order to … move on and … make the world a little bit better?” she asked — “however impossible that might appear or however utopian that sounds.”

Universal Loss runs until Feb. 18 at Gallery 101, 51 Young St, Suite B, just west of Preston Street.