IN KEEPING WITH MYSELF
JOCELYN KEAYS
Archival inkjet print, 60.96 × 91.44 cm (24 × 36 inches)
Archival inkjet print, 91.44 × 60.96 cm (36 × 24 inches)
Jocelyn Keays is an Ottawa-based artist who uses analog and digital photography and alternative photographic processes in her practice. Taking an emotional and romantic approach, she explores human thoughts, reactions and feelings towards banal life. In 2018, she co-founded the Ottawa Photography & Art Label (OPAL), a biannual visual arts publication that promotes and publishes contemporary national and international artists.
Keays wrestles with her identity as a biracial Filipino Canadian and her work often accentuates this split. In one section of her diptych, a halved pomegranate falls through a plastic bag. In the other, a double exposure of her own body casts a soft shadow on the wall. The work balances a sense of exoticism with a stark and raw vulnerability. And yet such dichotomies are layered on top of each other, negating the idea of one or the other, black and white, good or bad. Is it possible to remove this notion of opposites and create space for the in-between and the ambivalent?