Traversing Orbits
Traversing Orbits (Nuit Blanche Toronto 2024)
Traversing Orbits is an exploration of diasporic existence; rendering visible the complex interstices of movement, belonging, and resistance. Inspired by the relational paths of flights, routes, and riverways, the work reflects the displacement and reconfiguration of identities during movement from the Global South to Turtle Island. Twelve circular forms, composed of wooden structures and sheer fabric are illuminated, knotted, and suspended amongst the trees. These knotted orbits invite the viewer to navigate not merely a physical pathway, but also the conceptual terrain of distance, separation, and reconnection.
The knots materialize the tension inherent in diasporic life and function as metaphors for resistance and resilience. Formed under pressure, yet sustaining the connection, they are a form born of friction, whose fragility reveals its precarious strength. The knot becomes a temporal marker of both struggle and persistence, capturing the duality of vulnerability and fortitude that characterizes the diasporic experience.
The illuminated path becomes a space for reflecting on the interconnectedness of these journeys, where distance becomes a mode of relation and reconnection, one that necessitates a recalibration of both identity and belonging.
Traversing Orbits was created in collaboration with Michelle Peraza as part of Silksol Collective.
