This is an article from the Fall 2015 issue of Canadian Art.

A scar is a paradox. An index of survival, it also marks the site of an indelible trauma. At once an emblem of violence and healing, fragility and strength, it says a lot while also saying very little. It may even be invisible, ghosting the psyche with its contradictions, at once a bottomless pit of sorrow and a potential wellspring of action.

In many ways, the work of Montreal artist Nadia Myre, member of the Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg First Nation (Maniwaki), seeks to balance this paradox, to draw out its ambiguities, its valences of failure and resilience, loss and recovery, and distill them into a poetic idiom at once personal and universal. And while this process is ultimately about healing, it is not necessarily about reconciliation, at least not inasmuch as this might imply forgetting the past. Myre’s work does not seek to solve the paradox of the scar, but rather to bring it forward in ways that allow its history to inform the future.