Shadow Selves by Sioux Dickson
Shadow Selves is a part of Look Out!, a suite of Peterborough painters, video artists, and photographers investigating the possibilities of our urban landscape.
Sioux Dickson’s project, Shadow Selves, is a photographic conversation about being a part of and apart from.
Open May 8 – 12, at 210 Hunter St. West, in the front window of PBO Kawartha (Prosthetics, Bracing, and Orthotics).
Steps to Justice, 2023
A photograph of two early morning shadows stretching out over the steps to an (unseen) courthouse. The steps stretch the length of a very large, steep hill, leading up to the county courthouse. To the left of the frame sits the joystick of a power wheelchair, a golf ball in place of the factory-issued apparatus. The shadow of the wheelchair is long and lacy, thanks to the dangling accoutrement that catches the sun.
Adjacent to the wheelchair’s shadow is the wheelchair user’s standing shadow. The sun has been creative with her also. The angle and sun have conspired to give her shadow a voluminous, full-length skirt. She is all rounded edges, in contrast to the chair’s shadow of straight lines.
Why Not Both?, 2020
A photograph of autumn’s long exhausted shadows. A wheelchair user’s shadow (she is unseen, standing behind the frame) and her shadow-enabled, exquisitely long legs loom over the public education site. To her right, we see her power wheelchair. It is festooned with dried mud and other street guts. Fabric bags hang from the wheelchair’s back hooks. The shadows fall on a donut-shaped concrete pad that features educational panels around the sidewalk. In the distance, trees create a palette of bright red and muted yellows. The grass is golden and tired.
It’s Not Binary, 2021
A photograph of mustard-coloured loading dock doors very early in the morning. A shadow sits in the centre of the frame. Each door has a number emblazoned in pink paint over the small windows. Door one to the left and door two to the right invite us to label, judge, and choose – but the wheelchair sits firmly between both spaces. She can sort herself into both doors and also, neither door.
This is a Sign, 2023
A photograph celebrating morning shadows squishes our view. We see only the four concrete steps that are integrated with the sidewalk to allow the pedestrian to proceed up to the street. We see a small bit of the street overhead, a promise of the freedom that the steps could allow. At the base of the stairs, we see the shadow of the wheelchair user, her Converse-clad feet on her wheelchair’s footrests. Next to her is the shadow of a street sign. The shadows of the sign and the wheelchair user are changed by the presence of the stairs, giving both shadows a shape that does not match the shadow makers.
A Bridge Too Far, 2021
A photograph of a wheelchair user as the morning sun creates a dense shadow of her in the centre of the frame. The presence of the wheelchair user stretches over the pronounced lip of concrete. The elevation change makes mounting the pedestrian bridge over the creek a challenge. In the background, lush rich greens are matched in intensity by the cloudless blue sky.