Dust

Additional Information

Michelle Bellemare Dust Socks, 2000 (detail) life-size knitted socks made of dust, hair, and discarded materials

As a child, Winnipeg-based curator Sigrid Dahle lived in Regina on a street that ended where the wide open prairie began. At that time, drought conditions (similar to those plaguing Saskatchewan in recent years) left the air grey with dust and black with clouds of locusts; hot summer winds blew brittle tumbleweed skeletons across parched-brown suburban lawns. These memories are the point of departure for Dust, a group exhibition which explores the evocative potential of an ubiquitous and ephemeral material whose dramatic effects belie its near invisibility and lowly status. Dust elucidates the dream of a sublime social space or holding environment in which social connectivity is possible without the burden of subjectivity or the weight of personal responsibility. Poignantly, Dust also serves as a reminder (with a nod to Freud's notion of the death instinct) that destructive impulses haunt our noblest enterprises, shadow our gentlest gestures and vex our Utopian longings.