The Shade of a Shadow
1989 – 1991
The Shade of a Shadow
installation: framed oil painting with slide projection as the only light source
1989 – 1991
Engaging with texture, a love for surfaces touching each other, Fabijan guides the audience to a cave where we search for familiarity. The surface of the walls is inscribed upon and broken down in order to build up a bigger picture, a broader view. Whole images only reveal a glimpse. …There is never a whole story. The artist explores these existing fragments, curious to solve her own mysteries she becomes a detective, but holds the wisdom that understands the impossibility of resolution.
Fabijan finds clues in shadows and ghosts and employs them as presences. Their light acts as a propellent into exploration and questioning. They acknowledge the pain of history, real experiences of displacement, struggling against and within the confines of identity and the conflicts of being. She carries these shadows with her.
“There is a moment in “The Shade of a Shadow” where the angel’s hand
overlaps into the light of the mother and touches her heart.”
The Shade of a Shadow
maquette
1988
source: photo of my mother and brother taken by an anonymous street photographer, Calgary, 1956; plus, the Baptismal gift from my parents (1960) of a guardian angel, which always hung above my childhood bed
The Shade of a Shadow
framed light box (detail)
1991
“Shade of a shadow in the glass,
O set the crystal surface free!
Pass – as the fairer visions pass –
Nor ever more return, to be
The ghost of a distracted hour,
That heard me whisper: - ‘I am she!”
“The Other Side of the Mirror” (excerpt)
Day and Night
slide installation: continuous slow dissolve between two images
source: family album, anonymous street photographer, Calgary, c. 1956
1989
That heard me whisper
slides projected onto translucent borco (viewable from both sides),
a continuous dissolve between a positive and negative slide of the
same image creating a daguerreotype effect
source: family album, unknown woman, c. 1954
1989
These works were undertaken with the generous support of the Canada Council and La Ministère de la Culture du Québec.
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
1989–91
The Shade of a Shadow.
Anna Leonowens Gallery, Halifax, Canada
YYZ Artists’ Outlet, Toronto, Canada
Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge, Canada
Group EXHIBITION
1988
Basic Sound Radio Show: December 16, 1988. (Miriam Fabijan, I am she.) Halifax, Canada;
→ Listen
CATALOGUE
1991
Miriam Fabijan, The Shade of a Shadow. Helena Goldwater, author; Joan Stebbins, curator and author. SAAG, Lethbridge, Canada
ARTICLE
2016
Straton, Grace. “Hearing Listening,” BASIC SOUND: A BREIF HISTORY, NSCAD, pg. 6–8, 2016
PRESENTATION
1991
Artist Talk. The Shade of a Shadow. Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge, Canada