What a wonderful week of connecting with friends. Starting with Leesa Streifler, a Visual Arts Professor from the University of Regina.The first time we met she was doing an obsessive exploration of freaks ( the bearded woman and so on).
This time around her digital images of her large paintings entitled CONTESTED BODIES (at the Women's Study Centre at Oise), taking us on an intimate look at ourselves as women. She blurts out all the things we may think but never dare reveal to others. This includes attitude about aging, eating obsessions, the way we wear ourselves and the effects on our minds from our mothers and grandmothers that may take a lifetime to unravel and maybe never understand the damage done to us. "Recently I went to see my mother and nothing happened but I just felt terrible. I don't know why."
As I am listening to all this I start focusing on my recently painted purple nails, not long but dangerous. What do these mean to me? Perhaps a way of saying (flashing them) I am not a deadbeat even though I just wear black and grey.
The afternoon ends at my favourite Ethiopian lunch café in Corktown served by Ethiopian Elsabet with her wild hairdo looking very much like the girl in Bertolucci's film Besieged. Strange? Yes. Weird? No. But on her just beautiful.
I.S.
