Artifacts of Grief

Nadine shares the story of grieving her changing relationship with her son. Nadine became a mom at a young age and this shifted her identity and priorities. For much of her life, it was her and her son against the world. Now, as an adult with his own independent identity and life, Nadine reflects on the sadness she feels at what has changed, even as she loves who he is and what they have together...

Haley shares the story of her camera: a Nikon D810 with a 35mm lens. The camera represents so many forms of grief, both specific to Haley and representative to the way photography calls grief forward. Haley speaks to the beautiful invitation that a photograph offers: to reflect on what has changed, what has been lost. Haley MacPhee (they/them) is a queer artist hailing from Unama’ki/Cape Breton. W...

William shares the story of the loss of his Aunty Jo and the ways in which experiencing three concurrent losses shifted his understanding of himself and his emotions. He speaks of the grief of absence, both before and after death, and what it means to stop building dams and start building rafts. William Latham (he/him) is a kiwi living on treaty 6 land. On his right hand, just past the last phalan...

Hannah shares the story of her grief process, following the unexpected death of her three closest friends at age nineteen. She speaks to the ways in which grief does not wait for us to be ready and how finding the tools to actively work through grief can be a decades long process. Hannah Robertson (she/her) is a 36-year-old art and design lover, originally from Calgary. Now based in Vancouver, BC,...

Heather shares the story of deciding to end her business: the Edmonton video rental store The Videodrome. Heather speaks to the difficulty of processing the loss of that which she hoped would be forever and the beauty that exists in ephemerality.  Heather (she/her/they/them) was raised by herding dogs, children's literature, and early 90s television on the farthest edge of Atlantic Canada. He...

Rachel shares the story of a difficult choice and pregnancy loss. Rachel speaks to her embodied grief and the difficulty of providing external articulation to these deeply internal feelings. She speaks to the importance of attempting to speak these feelings aloud, despite that, so as to connect to and support others who may be experiencing similar griefs.  Rachel Greenley (she/her) grew up in...

Brian shares the story of losing Alex MacKenzie, his partner’s father. Brian speaks to what it means to hold space for one’s own feelings of grief while supporting others who are impacted by the very same grief. He speaks to the importance of allowing oneself to sit with the difficult feelings of grief, rather than seeking to fix or understand them, and the unlikely artifact that allows him to do...

Rose-Eva shares the story of grieving the loss of Edmonton’s Whyte Avenue music scene. She misses a time when biking home from her role as a host of CJSR’s radio show Adamant Eve offered the possibility of popping into any number of live music shows. She offers space to consider what cultural and artistic spaces do to build community and what it means to give space to the longing for what we no lo...

Carly shares the story of grieving that life has turned out differently than expected. Carly longs for a life she has envisioned since she was young. She speaks to the work of making space for grief while engaging in intentional healing. She offers space to hold difficult truths in tensions, grieving for what she longs for and making a future that leaves room for both what she is and is not in con...

Yeon Soo shares the story of choosing to reclaim her birth name, after years of going by a name chosen for convenience. She speaks to the intentionality in choosing to go by Yeon Soo again and, in this choice, the two different sets of reality that her different names have represented. Yeon Soo asks: who else could I have been? She offers space to consider what it means to think through the possib...

Greg deJong shares the story of the unexpected loss of his close friend and business partner, Brett. In the throes of mourning, Greg found an unusual doorway to grief. In welcoming this doorway as an intentional portal to working through grief, Greg offers space to consider the creation of ritual around grief processing.  Greg deJong (he/him) is good at problem-solving but is at a point in hi...

Kenyon shares the story of their loss of a home recently found: New Orleans. They bring with them an object of creation that honours the pain of losing home and the feeling of deeply missing a place. Through their grief story, Kenyon offers space to consider the ways in which creation can be a grief process, as we consider what it means to make and remake home.  Kenyon (KD) Burton (she/they)...

Tor shares the story of their journey towards peace, as they continue to work at reconciling the memories of a happy childhood with the reality of hardship and harm. Tor brings an object at once tangibly potent and symbolic of the ways in which what happens in childhood leaves wounds that risk reopening as we age and understand more about our pasts. Through their grief story, Tor offers a space to...

Kylie Burton—English teacher and writer—shares the story of the loss of her grandparents’ and father’s businesses. Through her grief story, Kylie offers space to consider how the loss of physical places—and the sense memories they hold—can complicate the loss of the people they represent. A surprising discovery helps Kylie to honour these places and to create emotional space to consider how the lo...

Sylvia—filmmaker and community activist—shares the story of Marigold: their beloved rescue dog. Sylvia brings an object that Marigold wore that now brings her into a space through sound and feel. Through their grief story, Sylvia offers space to think about the ways that loss can break us open and how we can acknowledge this breaking, as we work to reform who we become in the wake of loss.  S...

Elliott Kuss (he/him)—art director and creative—shares the story of his love of video stores and his deep sadness over the death of them. Through his grief story, Elliott offers space to consider the ways nostalgia, understood as grief, creates space to bring the present and past into conversation, in order to provide the opportunity to intentionally consider how to not just mourn the past, but ho...

Carolyn Reny (she/her)—a curious person, by nature—shares her experiences with travel. She brings an object that represents the movement through space that has resulted in both loss and change in her life, many times over. Through her grief story, Carolyn offers a space to think about holding contradictory emotions together so that we might welcome the way our experiences unmake and remake us. Art...

Ashley Meyer—artist and art educator—shares the story of her grandfather: Herman Kinzner (1931-2014). She brings an object that once belonged to him and now is part of her home. Through her grief story, Ashley offers a space to think about the way objects can provide an ongoing relationship with our lost loved ones, as well as an opportunity to think about differing rituals of remembrance that exi...

Every Thursday, an artifact serves as a conduit for a grief story. Kylie Burton and Elliott Kuss host Artifacts of Grief, an intentional space of grief sharing that welcomes the messy, complex, ongoing process of grief. In sharing stories of the griefs we all live with, Artifacts of Grief challenges the individualization of grief; instead, the show seeks to understand grief as an experience that r...