A Stitch in Time: Mourning the Unnamed

This project uses archival material and artistic production to think through the institutionalization of people labeled with intellectual disabilities, forced textile labour and those who remain unnamed in both records and in death. It asks us to question how we can mourn for those we cannot name. This project begins with two archival records. One a yearly Annual Report of the Orillia Asylum for Idiots written in 1887, the other a 1928 Industrial Training document for the Ontario Hospital School Orillia. Both documents relate the history of Huronia Regional Centre, though neither bore its name. It aims to employ art to tell stories that lawsuits and policy can not; that art as remembrance, as mourning, as responsibility, will allow us to mourn those we cannot name.