“Meaning emerges in the spaces of transition and connection, in the act of travelling between forms, objects, and ideas.” - Mieke Bal, 2002.
“The nomadic subject lives in a state of mediated tension, suspended between points of attachment and motion, between rootedness and the capacity to move on.” - Rosi Braidotti, 2011.
A Place in No Place
A Place in No Place is an open-ended mixed-media project that explores the intersections of movement, memory, place, connection, and belonging. The work presented here is new and still in motion, but I am beginning to put words around what it is teaching me.
I don’t remember exactly how or when I began to quietly imagine certain stones or pieces of rock as imbued with protective powers. Out of habit, I still place them on window ledges and near where I sleep. I sometimes carry one in my pocket to remind myself to breathe, or to connect with the place I carried it from.
During the past year I have been hand-sculpting my own rocks and stones from clay and other recycled and repurposed materials. Most recently, I created a collection of 250 hand-sculpted clay stones, each designed to fit snugly in my palm. Although these stones originated from an inner place rather than a physical ground, I Imagine their power in much the same way -they summon the intimate, grounding presence of a talisman.
Each stone is embedded with the material fragments of a memory—ashes from bonfires, dirt from forest trails, grains of sand from the shoreline, traces of late-night conversations and moments of solitude—gathered from the Nova Scotia wilderness where they were created between July and October 2024. In the process of travelling back home to my studio in downtown Toronto, I became the protector and the stones themselves became uneasy travellers, holding traces of one place and transplanted into another.
Aspects of this project gather inspiration from Mieke Bal’s “travelling concept” and Rosi Braidotti’s “nomadic subject,” where the stones gesture to the idea of memory and meaning as both rooted and fluid. They speak of specific places and times but shift meaning as they move, bringing personal stories into resonance with the tensions and vibrations of shared and contrary collective experience.
Suspended from the ceiling of my studio in constellations, the stones are strung with varying materials—organic twine, transparent fishing line, delicate elastic thread—each creating distinct aesthetic and affective responses. Those on twine sway steadily, weighted by gravity, grounding their motion in calm, pendulum-like rhythms. By contrast, the stones on elastic thread appear to hover nervously, their unpredictable tremmors evoking fragility and restlessness, as though they are disconnected and caught in perpetual motion.
Together, these constellations provoke reflection on the tension between stability and change, the personal and the collective, the grounded and the ephemeral. They create a dialogue between what we hold onto and what we release, the felt experience of belonging separate from place, and the transient beauty of connection in motion.
I don’t remember exactly how or when I began to quietly imagine certain stones or pieces of rock as imbued with protective powers. Out of habit, I still place them on window ledges and near where I sleep. I sometimes carry one in my pocket to remind myself to breathe, or to connect with the place I carried it from.
During the past year I have been hand-sculpting my own rocks and stones from clay and other recycled and repurposed materials. Most recently, I created a collection of 250 hand-sculpted clay stones, each designed to fit snugly in my palm. Although these stones originated from an inner place rather than a physical ground, I Imagine their power in much the same way -they summon the intimate, grounding presence of a talisman.
Each stone is embedded with the material fragments of a memory—ashes from bonfires, dirt from forest trails, grains of sand from the shoreline, traces of late-night conversations and moments of solitude—gathered from the Nova Scotia wilderness where they were created between July and October 2024. In the process of travelling back home to my studio in downtown Toronto, I became the protector and the stones themselves became uneasy travellers, holding traces of one place and transplanted into another.
Aspects of this project gather inspiration from Mieke Bal’s “travelling concept” and Rosi Braidotti’s “nomadic subject,” where the stones gesture to the idea of memory and meaning as both rooted and fluid. They speak of specific places and times but shift meaning as they move, bringing personal stories into resonance with the tensions and vibrations of shared and contrary collective experience.
Suspended from the ceiling of my studio in constellations, the stones are strung with varying materials—organic twine, transparent fishing line, delicate elastic thread—each creating distinct aesthetic and affective responses. Those on twine sway steadily, weighted by gravity, grounding their motion in calm, pendulum-like rhythms. By contrast, the stones on elastic thread appear to hover nervously, their unpredictable tremmors evoking fragility and restlessness, as though they are disconnected and caught in perpetual motion.
Together, these constellations provoke reflection on the tension between stability and change, the personal and the collective, the grounded and the ephemeral. They create a dialogue between what we hold onto and what we release, the felt experience of belonging separate from place, and the transient beauty of connection in motion.
StillMotion - video experiments (without sound)
StillMotion consists of two 1-minute experimental videos. Each offers a poetic exploration of connection, place, and affect, captured through the suspension and movement of hand-sculpted stones.
“STILL” features a constellation of stones hanging from thick, organic twine against a black background, to signal no place. Their slow, pendulum-like sway conveys a sense of groundedness, security, and calm Sitting with these stones for a length of time, I noticed my breathing become slower, deeper and more rhythmic.
“MOTION” provides contrast showing stones suspended by delicate, nearly invisible, elastic threads, creating the illusion they are floating in empty space. Their movement is erratic—spinning, vibrating, swaying—suggesting instability and fragility. Watching the stones hover restlessly brought up a feeling of unease. They struck me as beautiful and at risk of crashing to the ground. The longer I watched – slightly blurring my vision to see the constellation as a whole – the more their movement seemed to spontaneously regenerate.
Together, these works in progress have me thinking about how connection is not only a physical phenomenon but also an affective one, shaped by the strength and quality of our ties to place, memory, and each other. On a deeper level, they bring me to reflect, personally and in relation to shared human experience, on the ways we navigate the tension between security and uncertainty, stillness and motion, past, present and future.
“STILL” features a constellation of stones hanging from thick, organic twine against a black background, to signal no place. Their slow, pendulum-like sway conveys a sense of groundedness, security, and calm Sitting with these stones for a length of time, I noticed my breathing become slower, deeper and more rhythmic.
“MOTION” provides contrast showing stones suspended by delicate, nearly invisible, elastic threads, creating the illusion they are floating in empty space. Their movement is erratic—spinning, vibrating, swaying—suggesting instability and fragility. Watching the stones hover restlessly brought up a feeling of unease. They struck me as beautiful and at risk of crashing to the ground. The longer I watched – slightly blurring my vision to see the constellation as a whole – the more their movement seemed to spontaneously regenerate.
Together, these works in progress have me thinking about how connection is not only a physical phenomenon but also an affective one, shaped by the strength and quality of our ties to place, memory, and each other. On a deeper level, they bring me to reflect, personally and in relation to shared human experience, on the ways we navigate the tension between security and uncertainty, stillness and motion, past, present and future.
Statement: Kimberley White is a Canadian interdisciplinary artist whose practice moves fluidly between material experimentation, research, and poetic inquiry. Dividing her time between the wilderness of Nova Scotia's Annapolis Valley and the urban sprawl of Toronto, her work reflects a restless curiosity about the dynamic interplay between place, memory, and belonging. Grounded in process and metaphor, she transforms collected materials—ashes, earth, wire, clay—into evocative forms that hold tension between the enduring and the ephemeral. Her practice invites viewers into liminal spaces, where personal histories and collective narratives converge, evoking a sense of connection that is as fleeting as it is deeply resonant.
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