Please join us in welcoming Kendra Yee to the RBC Emerging Artist Residency Program! To learn more about Kendra’s artistic practice and her plans for the incubator lab, visit her profile and read her blog post below!

Close your eyes and picture that one time, not so long ago.

Maybe the minutes that comprise your thought stumble between a single second or perhaps it wobbles over weeks or they just might motor through many months.

A memory feels magical because it’s alive; metamorphosing with every recollection (for better or worse). Memories turn inanimate objects into sentient things. Throughout the day we listen to the whispers of daily diaries and the laughs of hand-me-down jeans. By interacting with taste, touch, smell, hearing and sight, the senses activate an objects cache, revealing the saga of memories. Memories can blur and they are not inherent truths, rather they coexistence with falsities. This is just a part of living; things are not always as they seem. 

Documentation of self reflections can take on a variety of different shapes and forms. These stories are often left out from cannon institutions, yet their dialogues cannot be silenced; they still chatter. Over the course of single seconds, wobbly weeks, and motored months, I will be looking at the enchantment of personal record keeping, observing the preservation of experiences and how we keep conversations through curated objects.

Here is a prediction that is also a promise: on the starting date of the residency, I will have consistently written in a journal for 68 days (everyday)!!

Here is a confession: I hate writing. This journal is the start of something daring, acting as an initial guide that stores daily antidotes. Sometimes, it is my friend. Tightly within the pages the scratched ballpoint ink keeps joy and fosters excitement. Similar to a vessel, it is responsible for storing, a paper pot for stories. Other times, it is my enemy. I do not want to write. Each word is poison. There is nothing to feel. 

Perhaps, you will visit me at the studio and we will have a conversation on a memory that you had. I wonder if some secrets will be disclosed? We could swap pages from our journals, embarrassed by the mundane details. It could also be awkward; we are strangers after all. Anything could happen. It’s just like the initiations of a memory, you never really know what will stick or what will fade away. With your collaboration, an installation will be built to preserve the memories of others through the creation of objects / items / things. Using clay and drawings as a foundation, the artworks created will combine donated paper paraphernalia and other items provided by the community. Coming together as a collection, these works will build a memory palace. Some things important to us… for a time that we cannot recall.