THE WATER SERIES

CO-PRODUCED BY HARBOURFRONT CENTRE

October 14- 22 HARBOURFRONT CENTRE THEATRE

ADMISSION IS FREE

The Water Series is an evocative nine-screen, twenty-speaker voyage that spans Harbourfront Centre Theatre. Through sound, moving image and architecture, artist Naomi Jaye invites visitors to journey through the profound interplay between water and grief.

The multi-disciplinary three part installation starts with MRI, where the viewer is witness to a woman’s experience inside a magnetic resonance imaging machine for breast cancer screening. It continues with POOL, where they sit inside a community pool change room as women undress. The third, SAIL, acts as the connective tissue in the exhibit, a moment of reprieve — the viewer is bathed in calm waters.

“My mother died of breast cancer ten years ago. After her death I started swimming at my local pool. I also started having annual MRIs as part of a high-risk breast cancer clinic. The grief I felt was profound, like I was constantly surrounded by water, at times drowning and at times floating. This installation is an emotional record of that time, of how grief can be funny, absurd, quiet, and calm. It is complex.”

Naomi Jaye