Portraits are often imagined to represent the truth or essence of their subject. My drawings of faces represent a desire to know and understand someone else, but also acknowledge of the impossibility of doing so. The materials and methods I use evade strict control—I simultaneously make and unmake these images.

The faces I’m drawing on the walls of the Burnaby Art Gallery with powdered graphite are intentionally faint and indistinct; they blend with the building’s architecture while interacting with a group of framed prints and drawings from the gallery’s collection. The history I represent is makeshift, it emerges from a series of events I can only speculate about, peopled by individuals I’ll never know.