THIS LIGHT (GREATER THAN THE SUM OF THE SUN)

2019.

The students of Sheridan's Brampton campus were invited to anonymously respond to an online survey, as a way of gathering language around how the students positioned themselves currently and where they imagined they could go. The questions were open ended and ambiguous and the students were asked to write the first thing that came to mind. Questions like, “How far have your traveled?” and, “what was your home before it was your home?” bled into questions like, “what do you want to have?” and “what makes a good life?”

What emerged were a series of complex relationships between care, obligation, survival and risk. The survey revealed that many of the participants were negotiating their immediate experiences of care-giving and care-receiving within larger institutions like marriage and citizenship. 

The installation uses diffraction grating, which splits white light into it's components, to draw metaphors between sunlight and care; as something that takes energy to sustain, takes time to arrive, and has the potential to illuminate, nurture or burn.

Produced as part of Sheridan College's Temporary Contemporary Residency and installed in Sheridan College's Davis Campus Library Learning Commons.