Sioux Dickson – Mother Says This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

Light the SPARK: Emerging Artists Exhibit
SPARK Photo Festival Exhibit

Peterborough Public Library; lower foyer
345 Aylmer St N
Peterborough
705 745.5382
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Hours
Mon to Fri: 10 am – 8 pm
Sat & Sun: 10 am – 5 pm

Light the SPARK: Emerging Artist

Sioux Dickson Instagram@SiouxLilyDickson

Sioux Dickson’s exhibit is sponsored by INSPIRE: The Women’s Portrait Project

Bio
Sioux Dickson is an interdisciplinary artist who has called Nogojiwanong/Peterborough home for almost 35 years. She is a graduate of both Fleming College and Trent University. Her work explores difference and disability as it bumps up against the social imperative of uniformity. Sioux and her cat, Schrödinger, live in East City, where she practices hyperlocal photography.

Artist Statement
My art practice finds beauty in forgotten things, difficult circumstances, and less-than-perfect places. I create art in alleyways and back corners where I seek out rotted wood, rust flakes and blooms of mould. When a surface is unblemished, it can hold only the pride of being pristine. As with people, the best stories come to light from flaws and failures. My work captures the narratives that amuse, delight and compel me.

My pieces are usually created in situ, but sometimes I uncover the story afterward as I go through my shots. My editing recalls nights spent in the darkroom where I learned I could either cloak or expose the unseen in a photograph. Today I am free from fretting about the rules required to show a scene as captured because my efforts are to share my view, not only the image photographed.

Many of the walls I have photographed no longer exist. I capture my art right before the system consumes the imperfect. I love photographing dumpsters. Dumpsters are an excellent place to find nature’s graffiti, the underpinnings of my art. This ephemeral nature of my work complements the joy required to enjoy the right now because I know that the beauty could be gone tomorrow. In this way, my art reflects my perspective as seen through the lens of a disabled artist living in a world not designed for wheelchairs or neurodivergence.

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