The Invisible Inside the Visible
(2014)
author(s): Sheilah Wilson
published in: Journal for Artistic Research
The Invisible Inside the Visible was a personal quest turned art project to locate physical evidence of a century-old racetrack on the Cape John peninsula in the village of River John, Nova Scotia.
The journey to find the racetrack was marked by its double invisibility. Not only was it remembered without specificity in regard to location, it was also invisible to the observing eye because it was embedded into the landscape.
This exposition is a reflection on the nature of landscape as a marker of cultural geography, and on my ability as an artist to pull the past forward through performance. I see the performative gesture as a physical articulation akin to a vibration; it disrupts the stability of the narrative. This project adds to the discourse investigating maps, memory, rural community, oral history, depictions of landscape, performance as tool, and the potential for dialectical articulations of place and history.
