‘All Sorts of Sorrows’: Processing Pandemic Loss in the (Virtual) Gallery

Back in early December 2021, I remember speaking to a friend—outside and at a distance—about the upcoming year. Exhausted by personal and familial health issues and impatient for change, I expressed a desire for “2023 to just start already.” “You mean 2022, right?” my friend asked. We laughed. I had meant to say 2022, but given the devastating news parade of 2021, a year that was arguably overburdened with naive hopefulness, the prospective distinctions between ’22 and ’23 seemed moot. The meaning of the future, while always technically unfixed, seemed to have shifted during the pandemic. Once a horizon for optimistic projections, lately, at least for many, the future has come to represent challenge and increased risk of loss.

In certain contexts, loss manifests as more literal or acute, such as the death of a loved one or the sudden impossibility of pre-pandemic plans. Other absences feel more amorphous, such as the abrupt or gradual diminishment of pre-COVID habits, pleasures, or so-called freedoms. Despite best efforts to pause, notice, listen, or share, most people lack sufficient tools or distance to appreciate its full scope; the compounded volume of grief today is, if not historically unprecedented,. Jointly supported by the AGGV and Legacy Art Galleries in association with the University of Victoria, the program took the form of three free Zoom workshops for emerging artists in late 2020, each led by a different artist mentor.