Sera Senakovicz’s exhibition You Can’t Go Home Again presents a body of work about the people who were displaced by the massive restructuring of downtown Halifax in the 1960s. Demolition for a planned but never completed freeway that would become the infamous Cogswell Interchange, Sco-tia Square Mall, the Metro Centre, the casino, etc., relocated over 1600 residents and permanently altered the spirit of the downtown. 
Sera Senakovicz
A series of drawings on windowpanes line the walls of Parentheses Gallery. The images drawn on glass are quiet portraits of people visibly torn and conflicted. There is an internal, reflective dimen-sion to the images: people with nervous hands whose memories fill their chests as they walk away from home and community. Senakovicz’s drawing style is delicate and considered; the wavering line embodies a sense of turmoil and displacement.
In the centre of the gallery hangs a giant woodblock print next to the woodblock itself. They are mir-ror images of hard lines carved out of deep black. The depicted scene is tense, chaotic, and emo-tional: people carry their belongings into the night as a boarded-up house falls down behind them. We recognize individuals from the earlier portraits. Their eyes look away, cast down.
The effect of the exhibition is the creation of something like a folktale. The imagery and characters evoke a mythological sense of loss, of being uprooted and losing one’s place. Like a journey into darkness or a lantern in the night, the story told is one of turning away from home and out into the unknown.
Parentheses Gallery: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Parentheses-Gallery-Art-Projects/201132469970306
Sera Senakovicz: You Can’t Go Home Again continues until March 22.
Daniel Higham works in a butcher shop where he’ll talk to you about art, food, and life. Daniel writes for Visual Arts News and is Akimblog’s Halifax correspondent. He can be found on Twitter @HighamDaniel.
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Sera Senakovicz at Parentheses Gallery
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