Reflective words written, 31 July 2026:

This is the photo diary I kept during my first time being in Winnipeg, Treaty 1, so-called Canada, studying at the School of Art, University of Manitoba. During this time I experienced such resonance with Winnipeg that I could not stop ugly crying for hours when I was departing… to which my housemate Robyn assured me, “You’ll come back.” I returned the next year and Winnipeg become my home for most of my 20’s. In hindsight, this resonance and “magnetic pull” was in large part because of the way my experience of Winnipeg mirrored the same frequency of my childhood – alienating, isolating, emotionally volatile, psychologically damaging, physically dangerous, Spiritually intense etc etc ultimately traumatic and maddening. It’s not necessarily that Winnipeg itself is all these things to everyone, it was just what I experienced, and it was the kind of experience where you don’t realise how bad things are until you enter the process of healing from them.

Originally these photos were all made and posted via a secret, private instagram account. I liked the secret-ness of collating my pictures this way… balancing the archiving mechanism of social media while restraining myself from revealing too much by having these on my public account. I actually hid myself in this way because I was losing my mind and didn’t trust myself to be posting on my main, but still couldn’t help that I was addicted to the gram, and that making photographs helps me see, understand, metabolise and move with the madness.

Reflective words written, 19 February 2022:

images in no particular order. going through these I could sense that I was looking for something back then. it was a relentless search. I wanted to grasp something, and in the notes that went with the images, I described this also. I suppose I still feel that search but I can tell I have grown much more numb to my dissatisfaction. my appetite has dwindled. these are very winnipeg images, or rather, images that I feel are apt to portray how I feel about and within winnipeg. I remember, I was really fucking hungry, alone, and maddening.

back then I was studying, I was searching for a thread for the essays I was writing. I found the threads. It was through these images that I was able to process what my written words would be. I could sense it all but I needed the camera to show me. I needed the frame in order to see.

now again, through these pictures, a picture of me, I seek a mapping, an orientation. I’m looking to understand where I am, where I’ve been, how I work, what I need. – 19 February, 2022