Slow Shadow
Nic Wilson – 2023
The work in Slow Shadow contemplates memorials and acts of remembrance. Through a constellation of texts, images, and objects [Nic] examine different materials associated with monumentation like marble, flowers, candles, and celebrity death merchandise. These objects are a record of duration and change.
Throughout the last couple of years, my practice has been vexed by questions of grief and mourning. Who do I mourn for? How do I do it and when? What is an appropriate and acceptable act of mourning? The work in this exhibition traces a few of these instances. They are not all acts of veneration but acknowledge a passing—of an idea or a person or a way of being. Some are references to other artists who I consider part of my queer lineage and others refer to more biological forms of inheritance but I don’t draw a sharp distinction between them. A self is a strange mingling of multiplication and subtraction.
The work in Slow Shadow contemplates memorials and acts of remembrance. Through a constellation of texts, images, and objects I examine different materials associated with monumentation like marble, flowers, candles, and celebrity death merchandise. These objects are a record of duration and change. Some are solemn, some are pathetic, some are opportunistic, and others are failures but each one is an attempt to track the complex ways that people and ideas dwindle and endure through the people left in their wake.
Slow Shadow was on display in the State of Flux Gallery from January 21, 2023 to March 11, 2023.
Photos by Chris Miner.
About the Artist
Nic Wilson
Nic Wilson (he/they) is an artist and writer who was born in the Wolastoqiyik territory also known as Fredericton, NB in 1988. He graduated with a BFA from Mount Allison University, Mi’kmaq territory, in 2012, and an MFA from the University of Regina, Treaty Four Territory, in 2019 where he was a SSHRC graduate fellow. In 2021 they were long listed for the Sobey Art Award as a representative of the Prairies and the North. They have shown work across Canada and in Italy, including projects with the Remai Modern in Saskatoon, the Art Gallery of Regina, G44 in Toronto, Art Souterrain in Montreal, and International Performance Art Week in Venice. Fluent across media, Wilson creates videos, performances and artist books, and writes essays and art criticism. Their work often engages time, queer lineage, decay, and the distance between art practice and literature. Their writing has appeared in publications such as BlackFlash Magazine, PUBLIC, Peripheral Review, NORK, Syphon, and Border Crossings.