LOVE LETTERS TO TURBULENCE

ARTIST STATEMENT 
Love Letters to Turbulence (LLtT) is a trauma-informed, interdisciplinary project combining visual, digital and participatory elements to explore identity, healing and personal narrative after trauma. The project comprises a main installation, collaborative zines, community workshops, a digital platform, an evolving archive and an optional textile element. LLtT is site-responsive, designed to travel across Canada to both institutional and community spaces, with accessibility and consent-centered participation built into its framework.

LLtT embodies the non-binary transience of being in the present moment(s) through inner and outer exploration, reflection and interactivity; inviting reimagined ideas of identity through reconsideration and communication of autobiographical narratives relating to trauma – individually and communally.

Offering a creative platform for viewers/participants to reflect on and/or share about trauma and the lasting e/affects at their own comfort level though multiple entry points, LLtT is a tool for communicating trauma related experiences with self, survivors and/or supporters. With this, LLtT aims to help normalize trauma related communication, removing some of the shame and ignorance often culturally and socially associated with survivors; co-creating more trauma-informed habitual ways of relating.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION
To be considered as a whole (or in parts if necessary):

WELCOME CARE STATION
Offering choice and agency, informing of subject matter and options for viewing/participation, with support resources.

MANUSCRIPT
Clotheslines thread across walls to display a selection from 455 8.5” X 8.5” image/text loose-leaf pages (ink, watercolour, acrylic, photo retouching fluid, graphite, watercolour paper). Three storylines link throughout resourcing lived experience and journal entries (1991-present), pulling from sexual assault (child, teen, adult) alongside systemic gender and class-based violence, self-awareness (19+ years trauma recovery) and communication practices (self to self, survivor and supporter). The manuscript suggests a nonlinear state less about the exact who-what-where-when-why’s of particular traumatic experiences and more about the after e/affects of trauma in, on and through a being.

ZINES
Seven artists – Leah Abramson, Sonja Ahlers, Joy Gyamfi, Marieke Helmke, Lichen, M-A Murphy and Kira Pratt – are each contributing a personal narrative in response through a 20-page 8.5” X 8.5” zine, using self-selected replicated manuscript pages and similar manuscript materials (to be completed Oct 2025).

WEBSITE
A digital container gathering anonymously contributed autobiographical narratives relating to trauma, healing and support has been co-created with designer Randy Walton, ready to be launched with the inaugural sharing. A screen and keyboard setup provides access.

WORKSHOPS
Additional clotheslines – starting blank other than one replica each of the collaborators’ zines – will also thread across a separate wall from the manuscript. Interactive tables with replicated manuscript pages and materials (ink, paper, etc.) will be offered during workshops and/or specified gallery hours (specifics TBD). Viewers/participants are invited to create 8.5” X 8.5” individual pages and/or zines. For workshops and/or pre-determined gallery hours, Fama is present at a scanning station where participants can choose to either scan (anonymously contributing to a second evolving community manuscript), keep and/or donate their work to the previously empty clotheslines, which will then display viewer/participant responses.

TEXTILE ELEMENT
A finished/unfinished quilt acts as a survivor’s Safety Blanket; a tool to signify when a nervous-system overload response occurs during intimacy.