Diaries: More Than Words

Artists Dana Belcourt & Victoria Klassen reimagine the diary - a record of our thoughts & encounters as we navigate the world - moving beyond the limits of words into a visceral, visual experience.

Dana Belcourt creates a visual archive of their daily life, capturing impressions of people, buildings, graffiti & animals they encounters on daily walks through their Downtown East Side neighbourhood. Seemingly disconnected images overlap like fragments of memories, pulling together what has made an emotional impact on them into sparsely composed surreal dream-scapes. As an urban Indigenous person of Cree & Métis descent, Belcourt hopes other Indigenous people can see their own thoughts & feelings reflected about love, loss, displacement, grief & connection.

 Victoria Klassen incorporates the notes & drawings left by her late great uncle Clarie into her layered abstract mixed media paintings. Clarie avidly listened to short wave radio & would write musings & make sketches on the things he heard. Photocopies of his notes are worked into her paintings, layered with her own explorations of colour, line work, collage & mark making. Klassen aims to share this unexpected connection she found with Clarie & to give him the voice he was unable to share while alive.