No Trespassing, 2016. Metal, vinyl, plaster, dirt. 80″h x 60″w x 52″d.

No Trespassing is a playful exploration into the concepts of borders, boundaries and ownership. The white-on-white sign melds into the white wall and the handwritten No Trespassing lines creep along the seams of the concrete floor. Viewers are faced with a decision of how they will navigate their relationship to the object and its meaning in the face of this familiar rule. The bent metal pole with dirt support shows recent evidence of the action of trespassing. The writing on the floor is written backwards with my non-dominant hand, a practice that I have been using in other pieces, to “reprogram” my perceptions. In this piece, I am exploring the thought that the rule of “No Trespassing” created by colonists, is a rule that was broken by colonists when they first came to Canada.

My work continues to explore different forms of domination with the understanding that I am part of a system. As bell hooks point out, “It is necessary for us to remember, as we think critically about domination, that we all have the capacity to act in ways that oppress, dominate, wound (whether or not that power is institutionalized).”*

*bell hooks, “feminism: a transformational politic,” Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black, (Boston: Between the Lines, 1989), 21.