drawing a blank

OPENING RECEPTION: Thursday, January 9, 5-7 pm at Open Studio.

drawing a blank, an installation by Rochelle Rubinstein and Jennifer Lindsay, addresses voicelessness in the forms of delayed language recall, family matters, resistance to aggression and violence, and the current moment of extreme censorship and self-censorship.

In this exhibition, visitors enter a spiral-shaped ‘labyrinth’ of 120 hanging accordion-folded books. Suspended from the ceiling to overturn the normal association of reading in a linear manner, the 10-foot-long books are visually and thematically connected, primarily by block-printed images. Viewers can follow patterns and narratives in a variety of directions. A sense of disorientation is encouraged.

These mixed-media books include Rubinstein’s woodblock prints, ink drawings, paintings, collages, embroidery, and hand-written text. Intertwined with images of nature, disasters, and human frailty, are themes of displacement, repression, ritual and desire.

Throughout the labyrinth, a soundscape by Lindsay can be heard playing on a loop. It includes speakers sharing turns of phrase, trains of thought, and long-form stories relating to voicelessness. At the centre of the spiral, visitors are invited to sit with both the visual and aural and become attuned to the paradoxes of drawing a blank.

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Rochelle Rubinstein is a Toronto-based printmaker, painter, fabric and book artist. Her work has been exhibited at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Yeshiva University Museum, and McMaster Museum of Art. For eighteen years Rubinstein was a member of Loop Gallery, and she has been curating exhibitions at Mon Ton Window Gallery (currently relocated to Kensington Market in Toronto) since 2008.

Rubinstein’s work can be found in public collections such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. As a community arts facilitator, her workshops and projects– involving drawing, printmaking, sewing and book-making – have supported populations like health workers, survivors of intimate partner violence, people with eating disorders, seniors with depression, and at-risk youth. Rubinstein is also a steward of Bela Farm in Hillsburgh Ontario where she is engaged in agriculture, art, and activism.

Jennifer Lindsay is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher based in Toronto, Canada. A writer, director, producer, and hand-maker, she works across mediums of theatre, film, ceramics, and sound. At the intersection of art and science, her work centers on the social consequences of a body in pain. Her interests include so-called communication disorders with acquired brain injury, crip time, and disability justice.

She recently produced an interactive sound and video art lab at Charles Street Video that involved communal knowledge-making in trouble with word finding. Her work has also been featured at Aluna Theatre, Mon Ton Window Gallery, and the Clark Centre for the Arts.

As an arts facilitator, Lindsay’s workshops have supported the acquired brain injury community through soundscape creation. In recent years, she founded a company which supports the work of artists and activists alike.