Silverfish 003: Hole

In April, I dug my first hole. It was Earth Day, and to celebrate I’d signed up for a tree planting workshop outside of the city. I’ve never been much of a gardener, having lived most of my life in apartments, and the process of digging a hole proved more difficult than anticipated. The soil was rocky and inhospitable. It was raining. My wet shovel slipped as it hit the dirt, barely making a dent. The workshop instructor advised me to dig as wide as I dug deep. This would allow the roots of my sapling to extend as fully as possible.

In May, I began to dig my second hole, this one facilitated by Silverfish. I came to my role as guest editor with three Holes in mind: the erotic Hole (“I’m just a hole sir,” shame, Is the Rectum a Grave?, and all that shit), the underground Hole (rabbit hole, wormhole, YouTube hole, K-hole, Hole like Courtney Love), and the [redacted] Hole (missing information, logical inconsistencies, plot holes, loopholes, holes we poke in stories). From there, Silverfish and I invited three artists and three writers to help us dig. We met in a back room at Trinity Square Video once a week throughout the spring to write, draw, read, chat, and make dirty jokes. We visited artist Sara Maston, who spoke to us about burial rituals and animal footprints. We talked to Lauren Prousky, artist-in-residence of a hole at a public park in Kitchener. We made failed cyanotypes, flipped through erotica, created collective collages, and took screenshots inside of our mouths. As spring slid into summer, our Hole grew deeper and wider, expanding to include discussions of grief, desire, art, alt-text, ectoplasm, and countless meandering asides.

If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. So goes the Law of Holes. The following pages offer an alternative: if you find yourself in a hole, keep digging. Inside this publication you’ll find an eclectic mix of poetry, photography, painting, video stills, screenplays, drawings, and essays, that explore the amorphous Hole from above, below, and inside. Readers will be confronted with a variety of voids and orifices including mouths, eyes, pussies, blackholes, redactions, chemical stains, unnamed pain, and the five holy wounds. Emerging from these various entry points are six original voices. Sexy, silly, and thoughtful, this group of artists and writers dug deep with rigour, and wide enough for their ideas to grow. Here is a preview of what our Hole contains.

Melly Davidson and Sid Sharp explore eroticism, abjection, and shame through a series of poems, paintings, and masturbatory fantasies. In 6 Clicks to Jesus, Melly structures and titles a suite of poems around a Wikipedia game in which players click hyperlinked text to arrive at the entry of God’s supposed son. Informed by the intertextuality of internet rabbit holes, these poems combine reference to 90s rock and Web 1.0 with text stolen from YouTube tarot readings and bathroom stall graffiti, to sketch a portrait of a pool shark reckoning with the faith and misogyny of their past. Unbridled desire abound in the work of Sid Sharp, whose painting, illustrations, and erotica merge the libidinal and the paranormal. In an exorcism (eat it or go without), Sid crafts an onanistic scene explicit enough to make Kathy Acker blush, accompanying a painting that features white embroidery rising supernaturally from the holes of a reclining nude. Sid and Melly unite their work through a series of activity pages, a collaboration that playfully highlights a mutual interest in fluids, dirtbags, and things that take place underground.

Hannah Bullock and abisola oni have an oral fixation. A collection of video stills, screenplay snippets, and erudite musings employ parody, performance, and the camera, to examine the mouth’s relationship to the (mis)perception of the self. In Yawn-B-Gone, Hannah uses the yawn as an example of how chronic pain is misconstrued by both medicine and the broader public. The writer blends personal narrative with satire as she weaves reflections from her own experience with an infomercial script for “Yawn-B-Gone,” an imaginary product that promises relief from “the rude and involuntary functions of [the] body.” abisola’s MOUTH, reproduced here in a selection of stills, shows the artist’s mouth as she smears it with cakey red lipstick and proceeds to stuff it with a cigarette, a cloud of grey smoke exhumed from its dark and cavernous hole. The piece evokes Vito Acconci’s Kiss Off, but here the artist reclaims red lipstick and cigarettes as performative gestures of self-soothing, self-loathing, self-creation, and a compulsion to fill the void.

Finally, Mobólúwajídìde D. Joseph and Saint Haarlem pair poetry and photography in a poignant and arresting examination of Blackness and grief. In scenes of the singularity, Mobólúwajídìde creates a polyphonic voice that compares the state-sanctioned violence against Black life to the inescapable pull of a black hole. His poetry, a descendant of Derek Walcott, Dionne Brand, and Canisia Lubrin, provides space for collective solace amidst the tragedy of death before its time, a welcome reminder that “none of us are falling alone.” In response to Mobólúwajídìde’s poetry, Saint Haarlem photographed the poet in his apartment during a warm afternoon in June. Haarlem’s initial concept was to capture the poet’s everyday routine, but an accident in the developing process stained the photo, resulting in an image that obscures its subject through a chemical scrim. The final portrait, Untitled (Portrait of Bo), illustrates the isolation of grief while simultaneously suggesting the possibility of connection between self and other.

I have yet to visit the tree I planted in April, but if the hole I dug for it is as expansive and generous as the one created by these six artists and writers, I have no doubt that its roots will take hold. I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to think, talk, listen, read, doodle, and laugh alongside this gaggle of freaks. Thank you to Silverfish for bringing us together, and for giving us a platform to show our Hole.

Cason Sharpe
Guest Editor

Sid Sharp is an artist and author-illustrator from Tkaronto/Toronto whose work is tied to the uncanny and the unknowable. Sid went to OCAD University, works in a bookstore, and also makes graphic novels for kids. They have Blair Witch vibes and own many nice sticks.

Melly Davidson is a poet, dancer, and arts educator currently based in Tkaronto. Melly’s primary work has been developing workshops and programming that prioritizes play and exploration for local community members and queer youth. Her writing can be found in Arc Poetry Magazine, GLYPHÖRIA, and Pigeon Pages NYC. Today Melly is moved by the Fast & Furious franchise, keychains, and religious graphic tees.

Hannah Bullock is an artist and writer based in Tkaronto. Through her interdisciplinary practice, she grapples with themes of authenticity, performativity, failure, meaning-making, language, and labour through the lens of her lived experience with chronic pain and illness. She is particularly interested in questioning the cultural (and personal) desire to assign meaning and value to experiences of pain—and narratives of morality that arise from this desire.

abisola oni is a Canadian-Nigerian video and performance artist and curator working and living around Tkaronto. The autobiographical reflections formed through her artistic practice manifest in several image-making processes, most often as performance for the camera. In developing the broader series of work called “Suburban Oases,” abisola portrays the physicality of grief represented by the mouth to visualize internal processes of dealing with the past. abisola completed a bachelor’s degree studying visual culture and studio art at the University of Waterloo, and they serve on the board of directors at Pleasure Dome, an artist-run presentation organization and publisher dedicated to experimental media.

Saint Haarley (Shaza Tarig Elnour) is a Toronto-based creative director and photographer who documents the stories of everyday people in ever-evolving, honest, and colorful ways. She often draws on elements of documentary, fashion, and conceptual photography to weave gentle and intimate images that center the authentic portrayal of oneself and one’s chosen family.

Mobólúwajídìde D. Joseph is a Nigerian writer who lives in Toronto. His first name is rooted in the Christian salvific story of triumphing over death. He is unsure if this explains his present preoccupation with death, black holes, and grief. He is more likely to credit the churn of news cycles and his academic work for this. ‘Bo writes poetry, fiction, and essays, and is interested in work that dreams abolition. He spends a good deal of time reading his work aloud to his perpetually unimpressed cat, Meowtin Luther King Junior.

Dallas Fellini is a curator, writer, and artist living and working in Tkaronto. They are currently pursuing a Master of Visual Studies in Curatorial Studies at the University of Toronto. Their research is situated at the intersection of trans studies and archival studies.

mg hamilton is a writer and curator based between Tkaronto and rural BC. Their research considers environmental art and poetics, rural anarchist settlements, public bathing, and artistic interventions in food and land systems. Their writing has appeared in C Magazine, Grain, Public Parking, and Peripheral Review, among others.  

Cason Sharpe is a writer currently based in Toronto. His fiction and criticism have appeared in Canadian Art, C Magazine, Public Parking, In The Mood Magazine, Brick, PRISM International, and the Hart House Review, among others. His first collection of stories, Our Lady of Perpetual Realness, was published by Metatron Press in 2017. Named a Queer Writer to Watch by THIS Magazine, Cason has presented work at the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Vancouver Art Book Fair, the Prairie Art Book Fair, and the Hamilton Film Festival.

Rowan Lynch lives and works in Tkaronto. They are a graduate of OCADU’s Criticism and Curatorial Studies program and one of four founding co-directors of Hearth, a space founded in 2019. Their work incorporates found imagery and memory synthesized through drawing and text, and organizing events and exhibitions.