Words Unsaid: Autobiography and Knowing

03.30.23 –04.04.23
University of Ottawa, Department of Visual Arts, Guest Scholar-in-Residence
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Aylin Abbasi (Ottawa, ON), John Hanning (New York, NY), Neeko Paluzzi (Ottawa, ON), Cara Tierney (Ottawa, ON), and Sarah Tompkins (Ottawa, ON)

Marking the culmination of a curatorial research residency at the Department of Visual Arts, Words Unsaid: Autobiography and Knowing interrogates the limits of self-knowledge through considerations of silence and speech. Drawing upon the work of five local and international artists, the project explores what is at stake when we slip from the discourse of knowing and rethink our attachments to a felt sense of certainty about ourselves, about the world. What does it mean to say nothing as a form of something? In Words Unsaid, the notion of silent speech is expressed as the point of entry into a space where meaning unravels, where sense disconnects from sense, where the truth of the subject is obscured and identity is irreparably slant.

The works on display are presented alongside transcripts of intimate conversations compiled throughout the residency period. Together, the artists and curator think through curating as a queer dialogic practice. Moving beyond the learned conventions of critical distance, the group exhibition is framed as a shared work of art.

Images courtesy of Neeko Paluzzi