-“’Je ne suis pas capable’, ça ne se dit pas en canadien”, (“’I can not’, is not a Canadian expression.”) were my late mother’s words to me in my early childhood. It seemed an appropriatetitle for my project in the only city in Cuba with a French past.My piece was a large fibre-work with 54 drive-by images taken from one location in Canada. The drive-by images were taken over a year as an act of witnessing the occurrences on  prime agricultural land up for “development.”

Selected images were heat-transferred to reclaimed pillowcases. In Cienfuegos, Cuba, I approached women to write in Spanish what was in their cabeza, corazón o alma (head, heart or soul). Yoslandy Torres García, a young craftsperson, over-embroidered the writing with a sewing machine. 

Anna Perez wrote in my journal “Lo essencial es invisible a los ojos”, words from St. Exupéry’s Le petit prince. Her use of these words helped me select what I capture and to question my Canadian way of life."

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Funded in part by OAC (Visual Arts Projects, International Touring and Exhibition Assistance Grants), Canada Council (Visiting Foreign Artists and Visual Arts Travel Grants)

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contact: Hamilton