Artist Carol Wylie shown at the reception for her exhibition They Didn't Know We Were Seeds, scheduled to run at the Chapel Gallery until April 12.  (Angela Brown/battlefordsNOW Staff)

By Angela Brown

Lives lived

Show focuses on Holocaust, residential school survivors’ trauma, recovery

Mar 16, 2020 | 1:17 PM

Their stories are not the same, but they both endured great pain and trauma that impacted their lives.

Artist Carol Wylie brings her art exhibition, They Didn’t Know We Were Seeds, to The Chapel Gallery in North Battleford that focuses on the separate lives of those who survived the Holocaust and residential school experiences.

The show focuses on the whole idea “of people putting you in darkness and burying you under a lot of trauma and darkness, but then emerging and growing out of it as a seed,” Wylie said, adding from the seed a flower can blossom to create something beautiful.

She said the show also reflects the courage of the survivors, and their “indomitable human spirit.”

The exhibition features 18 oil-on-canvas portraits of individuals who have survived the Holocaust and the residential school system.

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The title of the show is derived from the proverb: “They tried to bury us; they didn’t know we were seeds.”

Wylie interviewed a number of residential school survivors mainly from Saskatchewan, as well as Holocaust survivors from across Canada for her project that took over three years to complete.

“The experiences are different but the individual trauma is similar,” she said. “We all feel pain in the same way, and they all experienced the sense of abuse.”

Of Jewish heritage herself, Wylie said she started by painting Jewish Holocaust survivors, and then the Saskatoon artist had a conscious thought: “Don’t forget about the people who have a dark history right where you live.”

She decided to also focus on the Indigenous Residential School history in her project, both as a step toward reconciliation and because she saw a connection between the two groups.

Wylie said the subjects tell their past through the power of their gaze. Some paintings also include hidden words or images to convey something meaningful the subject may have said to her, when she interviewed them in the process of creating the project.

“When you hear one story where you gaze into the face of one person who has experienced that, for some reason there is a resonance there that builds the compassion,” she said. “That was one of the reasons why I wanted the direct gaze… I think everyone’s story lives in their face.”

Curator and manager of galleries for the City of North Battleford Leah Garven said the show in itself is quite unique as a whole.

“It was interesting to discover this body of work, and to understand Carol’s approach to it, to include residential school and Holocaust survivors respectfully, in a similar exhibition is historically significant,” she said.

When speaking of residential school survivors, especially those in the local community, Garven said despite the tragedy they experienced, they continue to “bring a lot of light and love to us,” adding “we can all learn from them.”

The exhibition is scheduled to continue until April 12.

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angela.brown@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @battlefordsnow