The Places We Carry is a site-specific, participatory installation of embellished fabric panels, strings of evil eye beads, cultural artifacts gathered from community, and sound. It explores the places we hold within us when we leave the places we were born — how their flavours, colours and traditions find new spaces of belonging through migration. Throughout Nuit Blanche, visitors will be invited to engage with the installation by tying torn fabric strips within it, while reflecting on a guiding prompt. This prompt asks participants to consider the grief we carry as people living in diaspora on Indigenous land and as witnesses to the world’s current state. It also invites us to envision hopeful futures — ones where all living beings can flourish.
Commissioned by Renata Azevedo Moreira, for Translating the City: Nuit Blanche, 2025, Sound design in collaboration with Mani Mazinani. Contributors: Sukaina Kubba, Kalmplex, Priya Zoe Jain, Alexandra Hong, Renata Azevedo Moreira, Annie Wong, Zinnia Naqvi, Farihah Aliyah Shah, Cecilia Berkovic, Sarit Cantor, L Kronick, Azada Rahi, Sasha Cousins, Laura Nanni, Tara Hakim. Image credit Darren Rigo.
The Places We Carry: Soundscape
Kriah:
This invitation draws upon “kriah,” a Jewish ritual of tearing cloth to express grief, as well as traditions from Anatolia and Uzbekistan, where strips of fabric are tied to carry wishes on wind. What do you wish for?
Kriah is the Hebrew word for tearing. It is an ancient tradition where we tear the clothing we are wearing upon learning of the death of a loved one. This practice is an embodied reflection of our grief and our heartbreak. Anita Diamant writes: “K’riyah is an elemental, physical enactment of the feeling that death has torn the world apart.”
The ripping of fabric is the sound of a heart breaking. Just as the fabric will be forever changed by the tear we make, our hearts are forever changed by the loss of a loved one. Kriah is a powerful embodied gesture that keeps us present to the experience of grief and allows our grief to be expressed and witnessed by family, friends and community.
Traditionally, Kriah is a practice reserved to honour only the closest and most meaningful of our relationships. It is a radical act to tear kriah to reflect collective grief. In doing so, we invite one another into our shared humanity, across differences, to hold each other’s many griefs together.
Kriah ritual:
Taking a strip of the torn kriah fabric in your hands take a moment to ground in your body and consider a wish you would like to make in these times. If you feel able, take three deep breaths with your feet planted firmly on the earth. Feel into the wish. When you feel you are holding your intention in your mind and heart, tie the torn kriah fabric to one of the designated ropes and ask the wind to carry your wish. Thank the wind. Take three breaths and ground. Thank the earth.
Listen to the ritual here:
This work was made possible with the support of the
Toronto Arts Council, Ontario Arts Council and Canada Council for the Arts.
Read further on the Nuit Blanche Website
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