Mrs. Spring Fragrance's Morning Room and Garden (2022)
This installation consists of three rooms and a small garden in a historic building in Trois-Rivières. It raise issues around gender and American Orientalism, showcasing Edith Maude Eaton (pen name Sui Sin Far) and Winnifred Eaton. Born to a Chinese mother and an English father, the sisters grew up in Montréal, where Edith worked as a journalist, writing about Chinatowns and the experiences of Chinese people in North America. Winnifred instead passed herself off as Japanese (under the name Onoto Watanna) and wrote novels about a country (Japan) that she knew only from afar. In the installation, I explore ways of portraying an individual or a family in a space only through objects, vestiges of the absent racialized and gendered bodies of the Eatons.
Accompanied by a soundtrack entitled, Songs of Edith (2022) – 19 minutes, composed of excerpts from the Mikado (arranged for piano), and French and English readings of Sui Sin Far's writings.
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