Ailene deVries
a stone holds my shadow

May 31 - June 22, 2025
Opening Reception: Saturday, May 31, 7-10pm
Closing Reception and Death Cafe to be held on June 22, 11:30am-1pm

When I asked a friend how grief lives in her body, she gracefully responded, "Grief gets lost and sticks to the bottom. It's a heavy sediment." Her response, simple yet jarring, echoes the weathering and erosion that happens when you are saturated with grief. A sediment, a breaking down, a crushing.

Maybe this is why, when creating images in response to grief years earlier, I felt a flattening of something that was inherently tactile. In 2018, I began a photography project in a Toronto graveyard. I was using a twin-lens camera, and the format allowed me to stand upright and interact with my shadow. I would look down towards my waist, where the viewfinder was, and create a frame in which I could dance when I looked up and met my shadow. For years afterwards this was my choreography; my shadow would jump from stone to stone, casting body onto unfamiliar names.

The language of photography commonly offers us the word capture. For a long while I sought to make grief my captive. I must admit, it took me years before I realized that I could not put a cage around erosion. When studying weaving in 2020, I brought one of my graveyard images to the loom. It was through the weaving of these photographs that I was finally able to process grief. I followed the pattern

of the weave as I had previously followed my shadow as the sun set behind me. My choreography continued in a new form: building an image, not capturing it.

— Ailene deVries

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In this poignant exhibition, artist Ailene deVries invites viewers to explore the delicate intersection of memory, loss, and connection through their exquisite jacquard weavings. Drawing from their personal experiences with grief, deVries transforms photographs taken in cemeteries into intricate textile works that serve as both a meditation on mortality and a celebration of enduring bonds. 

In each weaving, an unassuming tombstone holds deVries’ shadow and their gestures. As they move through various burial grounds, they capture their own silhouette cast upon gravestones, creating a visual metaphor for reaching out to those who have passed. These fleeting moments are then meticulously recreated in thread, resulting in woven tableaux that blur the lines between presence and absence, the tangible and the ethereal. 

By translating their photographs to jacquard weavings, deVries allows themselves to process the grieving through their body, as they pass the shuttle through the loom. The woven shadows take on a life of their own, sometimes appearing to embrace the cold stone, other times seeming to dissolve into the texture of the cloth itself. This interplay of light, shadow, and texture creates a tactile representation of the complex emotions surrounding loss and remembrance. 

While deeply personal, deVires’s work resonates with universal themes of grief and the human desire to maintain connections with loved ones. Viewers are invited to reflect on their own experiences of loss and to find solace in the shared nature of mourning. 

As part of this exhibition, we are honored to host a Death Cafe event on Sunday, June 22nd from 11:30am-1pm. Originating in Hackney, East London in 2011, Death Cafe provides a welcoming space for people to gather, enjoy refreshments, and engage in open conversations about death and grief. This complementary program aligns perfectly with deVires’s artistic vision, fostering a community of support and understanding around these often-taboo subjects. 

a stone holds my shadow is not just an exhibition; it’s an invitation to confront our relationship with mortality, to honor those we’ve lost, and to find comfort in our shared human experience. Through their evocative weavings, Ailene deVires reminds us that even in the face of loss, the threads that connect us remain unbroken.

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deVries is an artist and educator currently living in Long Beach, CA. deVries curiously tends gardens, weaving through intersections of art, language, and botany. With the lens of a professional photographer, they approach fibers and botanical pressings to explore grief, daughterhood, and correspondence. They hold a bachelors of fine art from the Toronto Metropolitan University and a Masters in Visual and Critical Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.