As the traveler who has once been from home is wiser than he who has never left his own doorstep, so a knowledge of one other culture should sharpen our ability to scrutinize more steadily, to appreciate more lovingly, our own.

Margaret Mead

Approaching the world with curiosity and openness and seeing what makes us uniquely different fosters more critical awareness of our own culture and limited perspectives. Traveling should humble us and sharpen our understanding and connection to ourselves and others. My current long-term project focuses on Niagara Falls, where I was born, and five generations of my family lived on land taken from indigenous peoples and many sentient beings.

Dakhleh Oasis Project

Dakhleh Oasis Research Group, Royal Ontario Museum and others, 1985, Wendy Woon, standing far left.

Through my work at The Royal Ontario Museum in 1985, I was invited to participate for two weeks in the Dakhleh Oasis Project, accompanying an interdisciplinary and international team of archeologists and researchers at a dig in the Dakhleh Oasis. I photographed and filmed the project in action. Interestingly, my My Sweet Past project (under ARTWORK Sculpture/Performance) foreshadowed this experience, life imitating art!

Research on Dias de los Muertos

I was ten years old when I first went to Mexico. I became obsessed with how death was visible everywhere in everyday life, from the roadside shrines marking where people had died to the coffin shops that displayed child-sized coffins in their windows. It seemed to me that there was inherent wisdom in this culture that valued life by valuing death simultaneously.

I began incorporating death into my drawings, including birthday cards to my parents, as a reminder of the transient nature of life. My love of Mexico continued, and I started graduate school in San Miguel de Allende, drawing inspiration from the time-based celebrations that began slowly with varied types of traditional celebration elements appearing in marketplaces, then the streets, and into the array of ritual events. Art, life, and death are in a constant cycle.

In 1986 and 1987, I traveled to various parts of Mexico to research and experience Dias de Los Muertos through listening, observation, documentation, and collecting related materials, supported by a grant from The Canada Council, Explorations Program. I worked closely with the Mexican Embassy in Canada, Cultural Attaché Jorge Alvarez Fuentes, and members of The Mexican-Canadian Association in Toronto to realize an exhibition at Harbourfront Community Gallery in October 1988, along with a series of programs developed by members of the Mexican-Canadian Association. The show then traveled to Hamilton College in Clinton, NY, The Art Gallery of Hamilton, and The Peel Regional Art Gallery. The exhibition was intended as. a catalyst for people to think about their relationship with life and death. The Raices Project, at The Art Gallery of Hamilton, in partnership with teens originally from Spanish-speaking countries at Sir John A. MacDonald High School, was one way to examine this topic in depth.

Installation Photographs of the exhibition Day of the Dead: A Traditional Mexican Celebration and its Legacy in Popular Arts, curated by Wendy Woon.