Canadian artist Michelle Forsyth creates work that relates to memory, loss, and experiences of grief. Her ongoing project, Ostinatos, is a series that documents sites of disaster areas years after the event has occurred. In honor of the people who suffered during the tragedies, Forsyth generates stacks of hand-cut paper pieces to form these colorful mosaics. The pieces of paper are shaped in the form of flowers, which symbolize the bouquets that people place on a site as a memorial to loved ones lost, as well as the new life and flowers that grow over time, covering old memories, and leaving no remnants of the disaster that once took place.
The artist says, “I equate my process as one akin to mourning rather than a craft. Repetition is employed to mark time’s passing, and with it I build elaborate surfaces covered with minute hand embellishment. In this private, performative act of making, I hide my regrets and my fears, yet find myself slip into moments of reverie.”
November 10, 1979 (Mississauga, Ontario Train Accident)
April 15, 1912 (Titanic Victim 221)
September 17, 1949 (S.S. Noronic Fire)
December 6, 1917 (Mont-Blanc and Imo Ships Collision)
November 7, 1940 (for Tubby) (Tacoma Narrows Bridge Collapse)
May 3, 1887 (No. 1 Esplanade Mine Explosion)
