OUR NEIGHBORHOOD 2023

Relief Print w/ posca markers, varied sizes, and cardstock paper affixed to string lights. 

Photos by Faraaz Hussain.

In November, 2021, I had traveled to Moncton, New Brunswick, for a printmaker’s residency with Imago: Atelier d'estampe Imago Inc. During a three week stint in which I met my partner, I had explored the city’s narratives of deteriorating housing situation, abandonment, and still standing communities. The finished artwork, aptly entitled The Neighbourhood was an honest attempt to accumulate these notions and quaintly express their accounts through reduction printing, repetition, reclaimed materials, and varied media. Yet while I consider this project a success, it was undeniably an outsider’s perspective into a town I was unaccustomed to. 

Our Neighbourhood is not only as a response to this original project, but a foil to the eye of an interloper by allowing public participants to create, curate, and cherish their own communities; in particular, rural communities which are so often overlooked in comparison to bustling centres. 

With the guidance of Caitlin Wilson of Maplewood Studio, Our Neighborhood is a series of interactive workshops where attendees create their own neighbourhoods in the form of paper and light based installations. Each iteration of Our Neighborhood takes on new audiences and perspectives depending on the cooperating party, location, and theme. The works fall under the umbrella of Forlorn, a series of printed works detailing the forgotten, abandoned, and questionable areas of New Brunswick, Atlantic Canada, and adjacent narratives. Forlorn has been funded by ArtsNB and the Canada Council for the Arts Research and Creation grants.