Cicadas-in-GTA-2021

Cicadas in GTA

A seed by: Larissa Blokhuis
Project: Main Pool
Larissa-Blokhuis-portrait-2-by-Ailvi-Brar-small-
Larissa’s parents each immigrated to Canada as children, from Nederland and Jamaica (with Igbo ancestry). They met and married in Toronto, then moved to Calgary, where she was born and raised. In 2008, Larissa completed her BFA with a major in glass at the Alberta University of the Arts (formerly ACAD). In 2009, she moved to the coast temporarily to take a job as a glassblower on Granville Island. She has been Assistant Teacher at Red Deer College and Terminal City Glass Co-op. Larissa has exhibited extensively in Alberta and BC, and divides her time between Calgary, AB, and Vancouver, BC. In 2016, Larissa completed her first public art piece, “Love Your Neighbour, Love Your Ocean,” located at Vancity Branch 11, Vancouver, BC. In 2017, she joined the board of Curiosity Collider as Arts, Culture, + Collections Director. With new insights gained by working collaboratively, Larissa seeks opportunities to serve the artist community. She completed her first curatorial project with the Collider in 2018, called “Interstitial: Science Innovations by Canadian Women.” In 2018, Larissa decided to expand her artistic focus to include performance, and has been developing new methods of self expression. In 2023 after taking an Arrivals Legacy Project workshop, she began working with Kimmortal on an album of music.

Disciplines:

Visual Arts, Music, Interdisciplinary Arts, Arts for Social Change
collaborations
This seed is a collaboration with: Industrial Études No. 1

My compelling moment is my last visit to my mum’s mother in her home before she went to live in a care home.  August is often a very hot/humid month in the GTA, and for this emotionally difficult trip, there was also a constant sound of cicadas even indoors.  Cicadas can be loud enough to cause hearing loss, and the sound is 24/7.  At times it was meditative, annoying, exhausting, comforting.  Now droning sounds remind me of my last visit to Grammy’s house. Film taken when we visited Grandpa’s fave garden and while on a walk from Grammy’s house.

Edit: The images were somewhat randomly selected, and don’t show the cicadas. I didn’t actually see any cicadas which made the sound kind of surreal.

Cicadas are insects that live underground as larvae for 17 or 33 years (there may be other life cycles too), and then emerge from the ground en masse as adults to mate. They live for a short time as adults, and I think they make this sound the entire time as part of the mating process.

Collaborations from this Seed

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