New exhibit from trans artists in St. John's explores grief, maternal figures

Daze Jefferies, left, and B.G. Osborne have a new collaborative exhibit at Eastern Edge gallery, built largely around grief and mother figures. (Sarah Blackmore/CBC)

For Daze Jefferies and B.G. Osborne, their new exhibit at Eastern Edge Gallery in St. John's emerged as an extension of their relationship.

"We have a shared love of histories and archives, we're both trans artists and we fell in love very quickly," Jefferies said.

"I fell in love the first time I heard Daze speak, and I'm not over-exaggerating," said Osborne.

The two artists credit their relationship as being key to creating vulnerable work in their new exhibition, Transient Maternal. With a combination of art styles including sculpture, collage, illustration, sound, and video, Jefferies and Osborne use their art to explore feelings related to grief and mother figures.

"The work in the show has emerged through this shared trans love that we have, and I think we felt safe enough with each other to explore some of these questions about love and grief," Jefferies said. "And they've been able to materialize into this collaborative voice that celebrates maternal figures and centers in love and loss and survival and change."

"Although it is very much about grief in a lot of ways," added Osborne, "I try to focus on the generative power of grief."

For Osborne, the art produced is a tribute to their late mother.

"I didn't have my mother in my life after a very young age," Osborne said. "I was not even 4 years old. So I would constantly go towards family photo albums, videotapes, films, her ceramic objects because she was a ceramic artist. So I have this wealth of material to piece together her life in a different way that kind of works with the psychic connection I still have with her."

Jefferies and Osborne's 'Transient Maternal' exhibit features a wide range of artistic practices from collage to video installations and structural pieces. (Sarah Blackmore/CBC)

Imagery of fire is one of the ways that Osborne feels a psychic connection with their mother.

"I was talking to my father several years ago now about my mother's last weeks. She passed away of cancer in 1995 and the radiation was what did her in at the end and she was not really cognizant of what was going on. She was constantly having hallucinations that the wooden four-post bed she was in was on fire."

"Before I knew about that story, I would often hallucinate smoke just appearing out of nowhere. I would constantly think that something was on fire. So there's that kind of psychic connection that I have with my mother."

She said charcoal acts as a shared symbol in their collaborative work, as water and the ocean figure heavily in Jefferies' practice.

"A lot of charcoal comes ashore, whether it comes from the water or whether it's been on the beach," Jefferies explained. "[Charcoal] ties back to the ways that I've been thinking about the ocean as offering fragments which can be read as archival objects."

"My play in this show has been about imagining relationships with trans mothers in Newfoundland and Labrador and thinking about the tensions. A lot of these intergenerational relationships are shaped by distance and outmigration and leaving. And so for me, I've turned to the ocean to sit with what remains and what is given. And so I see these things as gifts."

This jar on display at the exhibit contains 250 'mermaid purses.' Osborne says the 'purses' represent having to forge forward in the world without a direct maternal presence in life. (Sarah Blackmore/CBC)

Another key piece of art in the exhibit is a glass jar containing 250 'mermaid purses,' the colloquial term for the egg cases produced by a number of aquatic animals which can be frequently found washed up on beaches.

"The mother leaves the embryo with what it needs to survive," Osborne said, explaining the symbolic meaning of the mermaid purses in their art. "It's got its egg sack and then deposits this collagen casing, hooks [it] onto seaweed and it's 'Best wishes, good luck. I hope you have everything you need.'"

Jefferies said the couple used a wide range of artistic techniques to create the pieces in the exhibit.

"We have a mixture of collage and we're working with beach wash up sound, video, projection, text, fabric, visual poetry," she said. "That kind of open language allows us to approach some of these questions about maternal relationships and histories and water imagined as archives in these expansive ways."

Both Osborne and Jefferies expressed their thanks to Arts NL for supporting the project. For Osborne, they are pleased to share the remnants of their mother's life with the world.

"I'm so lucky to have what I have and to be an archivists and to get to take care of this material," Osborne said. "To me, this is sharing my mother, her life with other people as well as our collaborative work."

Transient Maternal is on display at Eastern Edge in St. John's until May 11.

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