Ache of Being

This practice is my meditation on Being in this world that compels different questions of self, the Other and the Earth, yielding possibilities for our collective future that we have yet to dream into being. Over 30 years, thousands of posters of my face have been placed across Canada. The face is altered to resemble escaped slave drawings from the 18th century Montreal Gazette. Enslavers bought space and placed these drawings as ads in order to hunt for escaped slaves. By recontextualizing the escaped slave poster, I bring attention to the history of slavery in Canada and the United States filtered through my contemporary feelings of being studied, dehumanized, and pursued. In addition to interrogating history, I ask, “what it means to Be in the world?” Dislocation and rootedness, to be known and alone, these oversimplified binaries inadequately articulate our profound longing to Be. Credit Wayne Dunkley.