Resonant Matter
“How does distance look?” is a simple direct question. It extends from a spaceless
within to the edge
of what can be loved.”
-Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red
How does distance look? Is it the manifestation of an echo? Does it get weighed down by gravity? Is it obscured by shadow? Or fragmented by perception? There are, perhaps, no clear answers to the question of distance. In Resonant Matter, artists Naomi Dodds, Sofia Escobar, Maria Esthela, and Aline Setton venture into the threshold between places and report back what’s there. The works in this exhibition explore how migration, memory, and materiality converge through abstraction, light, and site, emphasizing the artists’ shared histories of migration to, from, and within Canada.
Influenced in various ways by the Light and Space movement, each artist approaches a visual description of distance through fragmented shifts in light, shadow, sound, and movement—foregrounding the body’s relationship to its environment. The artworks trace how personal histories of migration and cultural dislocation surface not through direct representation, but through an engagement with tension: between material and metaphor, weight and lightness, concealment and revelation.
Erin Storus
19.04.2025 - 26.05.2025
Group Exhibition
Collision Gallery - Toronto, Canada
Aline Setton's piece “If I could hold all the pieces” was awarded the Artist Direct Grant from Partners in Art.
If I could hold all the pieces
Acrylic paintings on canvas, aluminium stands and concrete bases.
In If I could hold all the pieces, a suite of seven acrylic paintings, Setton explores the emotional landscape of resettlement. Some works depict familiar spaces—like the Toronto Reference Library, a site of early comfort—while others dissolve into abstraction: waves, stone, perhaps distant planets. Together, they form a fragmented collage of belonging across geographies. Architectural elements, including custom easels inspired by Lina Bo Bardi, frame the paintings as structural objects. These sculptural supports choreograph the viewer’s movement through the gallery, echoing the artist’s own negotiation of place, memory, and the subtle shifts in how we learn to inhabit the world.
Erin Storus