On the Paradox of the Unrepresentable: The Trauma Narratives in Robert Houle’s Sandy Bay Residential School Series and Wayne Dunkley’s #whatdoyoufeelwhen

Abstract

This paper focuses on the artworks Sandy Bay Residential School Series (2009) by Robert Houle and #whatdoyoufeelwhen (2018) by Wayne Dunkley, respectively, two contemporary Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour (BIPOC) visual artists based in Canada who call into question specific historical acts of colonial and racial violence. These works provide a means to reckon with the trauma of two important historical moments that have been omitted from Canada’s historical records. I argue that these narratives of trauma can be conveyed and witnessed through visual art. While Houle’s paintings illustrate his recollections of his traumatic childhood in the Canadian residential school system, Dunkley’s photo-based art project confronts viewers with his digitally altered self-portrait series resembling 17th Century drawings of runaway slaves in Canada. This paper questions how these artworks, as narrations of past traumatic injustices, provoke critical questions about the haunted present. I argue that these two visual artworks afford viewers a means to reckon with different trauma narratives through the paradox of the unrepresentable hauntings that unsettle the viewer in the artists’ lived experiences through intersections of memory. The trauma from these historical events can paradoxically, in turn, be alluded to multidirectionally, as conceptualized by Michael Rothberg (2009) across cultures to resonate both with and against each other to echo the importance of learning about multiple injustices as constellations of memory.