a bead, a breath is an multigenerational installation that shows two alternating projected videos that include and center breath narratives. Sound is a key component to these videos in that they create an environment around the visual elements shown. The exhibition includes Our Hands, Our Body, Our Spirit, 2022, and My Moon, 2023 (still being worked on), as well as large foam bead sculptures meant to be moved around the space and played with by either adults or children.
a bead, a breath is an multigenerational installation that includes two projected videos that center breath narratives. Sound is a key component to these videos in that they create an environment around the visual elements shown. The two videos Our Hands, Our Body, Our Spirit, 2022, and My Moon, 2023, are exhibited with large foam bead sculptures meant to be moved around the space and played with by either adults or children.
Our Hands, Our Body, Our Spirit is made from the documentation of a performance Carrie Allison did in 2019 at Middle Cove, Newfoundland. Through the Eastern Edge land-based residency in 2019, Allison completed a performance at Middle Cove Beach in Ktaqmkuk (Newfoundland) that critiqued western notions of 'land art’. She then spent three hours collecting rocks from the beach and carrying them up a bluff to position them in a circle the diameter of the length of her body. Allison then carried all the rocks back down to the beach, leaving an imprint of the rocks on the land. This form of labour was meant to activate an action of love and care, making something from the surrounding area and then putting each piece back with equal care.
Thinking through care work and her own lived experience of becoming a mother, My Moon is a beaded animation that visually depicts ‘a bead, a breath,’ a beaded stop motion animation. Combining two extremely slow practices, beading and stop-motion, to contemplate Allison’s lived experience of being an anxious new parent during the COVID-19 pandemic. When her son was born she was nervous and anxious about keeping him alive. Allison was constantly checking in on him, making sure he was breathing, monitoring his breath, and asking herself endless questions about his health and safety. My Moon is a piece Allison made to cope with these anxieties. She would often record her son's breath while he was sleeping, listening to it and thinking how it changed from last week. This anxious practice was something she wanted to embrace and celebrate, especially as she grew more comfortable in her new mothering role. My Moon is a meditation on this time in the artists life, where finding the time to make art was difficult but by working in beaded animation, which is an incredibly slow practice, she was able to make this piece in between naps and feedings.
