Not behind but through
Sgraffito on marbled raw stoneware + steel tube + wall vinyl. Beyond the Bar Graph, Arts Etobicoke, 2023.
Inspired bythe colloquial object of the bead curtain, Not behind but through draws upon 70+ interviews conducted by Arts Etobicoke’sCommunity Story Coordinators. Gathered during the lockdown years following thestart of the COVID19 pandemic, the interviews offer both qualitative &quantitative insight into community members’ arts & culture interests, aswell as identifying areas of improvement they see within Arts Etobicoke. Alongsidedeeply personal stories of individual relationships to the arts, the interviewsalso reveal larger thematic similarities and recurring points of sharedinterest among the interviewees.
In immigrant households across many cultures, and more recently in the living spaces of the broader public, the bead curtain is a common sight in doorways, offering dynamic moments of transition between rooms and across space. Its form is adopted here to offer passage into the wealth of information contained within the Arts Etobicoke interviews. Each ceramic bead in this curtain represents a data point. The larger beads, composed on 17 unique shapes, indicate broad recurring areas of interest/ need identified among the interview data, and hang in order of most to least mentioned by the interviewees. The smaller ceramic beads separating these broader category beads stand for subcategories within each area and are similarly organized in order of descending mentions. Beads are grouped into strings according to region, from L-R: North Etobicoke (strings 1, 2), Central Etobicoke (3, 4), South Etobicoke (5, 6), Other (postal codes from outside Etobicoke; 7, 8).
Gentle visitor interaction with the curtain is encouraged.