The Love that Remains
Curated by Samantha Lance

May 1–July 27, 2024

Art Museum at the University of Toronto
University of Toronto Art Centre
(in University College)
15 King’s College Circle

The Love that Remains brings together three Toronto-based artists whose contemporary textile practices recover matrilineal histories of displacement and belonging. Par Nair, Julie Gladstone, and Carol Ann Apilado revitalize ancestral practices to reconnect with their families, genealogies, and homelands. They seek to reconcile with the loss, trauma, and grief tied to their histories in the South Indian, Sephardic, and Filipino diasporic communities respectively. The artists’ acts of weaving, embroidery, and knitting evoke how fabric has served as a material for survival, protection, and resilience. They bring attention to the female labour and creative expressions of their ancestors who endured displacement and/or exile across generations and in different geographical contexts. The artists’ works invite us to develop a deeper understanding of the role and history of women’s cultural work as weavers, embroiderers, and knitters.

Par Nair is an artist of South Indian descent who hand-embroiders letters of affection and melancholia into her mother’s sarees, worn by past generations of women in her family. With respect for her matrilineal ancestors exiled from Spain in 1492, Julie Gladstone creates fabric works and digital videos inspired by Jewish mystical teachings, lullabies and ceremonial textiles. Carol Ann Apilado is a self-taught weaver who creates handwoven installations to reconnect with the textile practices and Ilokano beliefs of her Filipino ancestors. Through intimate and intensive processes, these three artists develop textiles to heal ancestral trauma and carry forward these techniques to the next generation.

This exhibition is produced as part of the requirements for the MVS degree in Curatorial Studies at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, University of Toronto.

Photograph by Toni Hafkenscheid

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Handwoven cotton, cottolin (cotton/linen), stones, handwoven pillow
Six 11.5” x 10’ panels, 48” footprint, 10’-0” high; 2’-0” diameter ring
2023

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For centuries, the Ilokano and Itneg People of the Philippines have woven the kusikus (Ilokano word for ‘whirlpool’) pattern into blankets and sails. They believe that the psychedelic design confuses evil spirits and thus provides protection during their travels. Kusikus is also symbolic of the wind spirit and weaving this pattern appeases the wind god.

“When I sit under the handwoven panels, I see this installation as a way to connect with my ancestors or to channel a divine source. I learned that this sacred geometric pattern is based on the golden ratio, a pattern found everywhere in nature.”

Each panel contains nine kusikus ‘eyes’ formed around a ring containing the golden ratio sequence. The stones, sourced from the artist’s neighbourhood beach, are placed on each panel act as grounding anchors to the earth.

For the exhibition, visitors were welcomed to touch gently and with care. They were invited to sit or stand mindfully within its centre, close their eyes, look up and ask questions like, “How do I feel? Am I present? What do I remember about my ancestors?”

Heirloom family blanket

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Carol Ann's grandmother

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