New exhibit from trans artists in St. John's explores grief, maternal figures

For Daze Jefferies and B.G. Osborne, their new exhibit at Eastern Edge Gallery in St. John's emerged as an extension of their relationship.

"We have a shared love of histories and archives, we're both trans artists and we fell in love very quickly," Jefferies said.

"I fell in love the first time I heard Daze speak, and I'm not over-exaggerating," said Osborne.

The two artists credit their relationship as being key to creating vulnerable work in their new exhibition, Transient Maternal. With a combination of art styles including sculpture, collage, illustration, sound, and video, Jefferies and Osborne use their art to explore feelings related to grief and mother figures. 

"The work in the show has emerged through this shared trans love that we have, and I think we felt safe enough with each other to explore some of these questions about love and grief," Jefferies said. "And they've been able to materialize into this collaborative voice that celebrates maternal figures and centers in love and loss and survival and change."

"Although it is very much about grief in a lot of ways," added Osborne, "I try to focus on the generative power of grief."

For Osborne, the art produced is a tribute to their late mother.

"I didn't have my mother in my life after a very young age," Osborne said. "I was not even 4 years old. So I would constantly go towards family photo albums, videotapes, films, her ceramic objects because she was a ceramic artist. So I have this wealth of material to piece together her life in a different way that kind of works with the psychic connection I still have with her."

Imagery of fire is one of the ways that Osborne feels a psychic connection with their mother. 

"I was talking to my father several years ago now about my mother's last weeks. She passed away of cancer in 1995 and the radiation was what did her in at the end and she was not really cognizant of what was going on. She was constantly having hallucinations that the wooden four-post bed she was in was on fire."

"Before I knew about that story, I would often hallucinate smoke just appearing out of nowhere. I would constantly think that something was on fire. So there's that kind of psychic connection that I have with my mother."

She said charcoal acts as a shared symbol in their collaborative work, as water and the ocean figure heavily in Jefferies' practice. 

"A lot of charcoal comes ashore, whether it comes from the water or whether it's been on the beach," Jefferies explained. "[Charcoal] ties back to the ways that I've been thinking about the ocean as offering fragments which can be read as archival objects."

"My play in this show has been about imagining relationships with trans mothers in Newfoundland and Labrador and thinking about the tensions. A lot of these intergenerational relationships are shaped by distance and outmigration and leaving. And so for me, I've turned to the ocean to sit with what remains and what is given. And so I see these things as gifts."