Upstream

Upstream is a story, a performance expressed through a series of photographs. It is a reexamination of the role of white European male throughout western art history. It uses the Humber River in Toronto as it’s setting, where the character transforms, inhabiting some of the roles we play and are bound by as males; such as explorer, protector, creator, destroyer.

The river is both urban and natural; it speaks of the past as a place that was historically significant, but also as metaphor for rest of our natural world - on the brink of collapse, but still sustaining life. If you walk here, you’ll hear the songs of birds or see the footprints of animals along the banks. You’ll see the evidence of men on the margins finding shelter away from a cruel and expensive city or a place to feed addictions.

In this series of works, I attempt to uncover some of consequences of raising men to suppress emotion, and of encouraging capitalist ambitions at the expense of nature and humanity. Men are frozen, their human emotions and neediness hidden, they are stuck. They are on the verge of action but paralyzed - a sculpture or a photograph, set within a tableaux.