ECHO ON THE LANDING

Sonya Filman

July 15th, – September 10th, 2022

Echo on the Landing proceeds from an effort to find possibility in the space of loss, and to conjure connection in the present. Gathering traces of treasured keepsakes, fragments of  family home, and slivers of a shifting landscape in a cyanotype quilt, Filman seeks to contend with the deaths of her grandparents.

Ahead of her grandfather’s passing, the artist photographed his home in Northern Ontario and the Great Lakes landscapes between her home and his. Compelled by a desire to hold time, to resist the slippage already underway, she combed these spaces in transition Vignettes of familiar thresholds made strange, devoid of presence and personal belongings, appear alongside views of sand and stone along the shoreline, forever shifting under the persistent motion of water.

But photographs are static, and forever tied to the past; on their own, they are insufficient to the active process of mourning. In Echo on the Landing, Filman seeks to move beyond static images as memory-keepers, toward a practice of being with memory that is more embodied,
tactile, and sensorial. She frames her photographs within larger cyanotypes, intertwining the with the gauzy, wavering shadows of her grandparents’ possessions, hovering between visibility and invisibility, presence and absence. Bringing these pieces together in the form of  quilt, Filman draws a common thread from a cherished past to the present, enacting a process of remembering that gives new form to that can never be truly lost.

Sonya Filman, detail from Echo on the Landing, 2022. Cyanotype on cotton fabric. Courtesy the artist.