what holds you together?

what holds you together?

a window installation by sarah montroy

feb 4 – mar 4, 2025
ccbc window gallery

artist statement

This project emerged in the midst of a difficult transition period, fueled in part by a desire to understand how to keep moving forward when I felt I was crumbling. Through a multitude of mental health struggles, fear, and a deep dissatisfaction with life, I began to think about what it is that has held the crumble at bay in the past. My fantastic family. My generous friends. A hope in something outside of myself. Simple yet vital things that have held me together. I invited my friends and family to join in by providing me with a piece of writing. They were each asked to respond to the question of “What holds you together?” in whatever way felt right. I treated this process both as a fact-finding mission for myself, and as an invitation into self-reflection, gratitude and more for the people I love.

The responses I received were very diverse, from old journal pages and poems, to personal stories and musings. My people were held together by love, hope, mercy, community, kindness, God, and more. They were also very much like myself, with similar experiences of sadness and trauma, fear and brokenness, messy moments of barely holding it together, mere threads keeping them from falling apart. Each of us, unique in our experiences, but also very much the same in our need to have some sort of joining thread. I then took these words, along with some of my own poems from a few dark days, and added them to my clay. The shredded paper fibres were added to clay slip, creating a material that is both strong to build with, and conceptually rich. In the heat of the kiln the paper burns out, leaving the piece lightweight and imbued with the trace of whatever stories were put in.

For the form, I knew I wanted to continue working with the motif of the patchwork quilt. I have been drawn to this culturally rich object recently as a fantastic vessel for speaking about what it is to be a human.

To be a person, patchworked together from a multitude of different stories, experiences, and more, coming together into a wonderful kaleidoscope of colours and textures. Rendered in clay, the quilt is forever embedded with the touch of my hands and the traces of the words that went into it. This fragmented hanging quilt, held in tension through a diversity of fragile and stable threads, represents myself and my collaborators, people who are always in the process of being made and unmade. The quilt is also in a state of vulnerability, with the back structure (usually on the interior of the quilt) exposed for all to see. Short fragments of the words entrusted to me are written on the edges, small moments for the viewer to read and reflect on.

My hope is that as viewers engage with the work they are able to take time to reflect on what holds them together, especially as we begin a new year. While this piece was created in the context of my personal community, all viewers are invited into this practice of self-reflection and gratitude by taking a moment to write their reflections on a piece of paper, which I will shred and add to a future piece.

bio

Sarah Montroy is a multi-disciplinary artist who lives and works in Vancouver, BC on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. Her work integrates textile forms and textures with clay, engaging with themes of brokenness, generational traumas and traces, and making as a method of mending and healing. After beginning her studies in Interior Design, she switched her focus to fine arts, completing a diploma at Langara College, followed by a BFA at Emily Carr University.

The foundation of her practice can be summed up in a desire to approach creativity and making as actions towards wholeness, as she explore what breaks us & holds us together, in conversation with her community.

×