The practice of Toronto-based artist Tau Lewis is anchored in a spiritual imaginary, recuperating feelings, forms and landscapes often rendered unseen. Working primarily with found textiles and foraged objects, Lewis' works take shape through slow, labour-intensive processes such as carving, quilting and scavenging, drawing on a material and psychic resourcefulness that has long been significant to black cultural production.
For Sparkle's Map Home, Lewis harnesses a broad spectrum of seemingly modest materials to conjure a latent ancestral otherworld. Re-envisioning Gairloch Gardens as a scene from the cosmos, Lewis reflects on the possibilities of outer space as a locus of both a black past and a black future, one where that which is unbound—materially, spiritually and otherwise—is given license to take shape anew.
